


When The Autumn Moon Is Bright

by BrooklynBugleBoy



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018) Actor RPF, Queen (Band)
Genre: Alcoholism, Baby Werewolves, Bad Werewolf Puns, Beast of Gévaudan - Freeform, Blood, Death, F/M, Freddie Mercury Lives, Gore, He's a lovely old gay, Hugs, Humans vs. Werewolves, It's gross dude, Joe's Accidental Pack, John Deacon is Joe's Dad, John Is So Done, John is a Bit Not Good, Jurassic Park - Freeform, M/M, Mythology References, Pain, Periods, Pining, Polyamory, Poor Rami is basically a Werewolf Babysitter, Rexy - Freeform, Sad, Stillbirth, Suicidal Thoughts/Actions, Werewolf Culture, Werewolf History, Werewolf Hunters, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Transformations, Werewolves, cheerleading
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-10-18 08:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17577632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBugleBoy/pseuds/BrooklynBugleBoy
Summary: When Joe Mazzello was five years old, his grandfather pulled him away from playing with a few local children in the garden, to give him a present. Even though it wasn't his birthday.It was an old leather necklace with a real silver bullet hanging in the center as a makeshift pendant."This belonged to my father, grandfather and his father before him. It has been passed down in The Valet Family for generations and now it's all yours."It hung heavy, dipping into his shirt where no one else could see. But he slowly tugged it back out again and examined it more closely. There were words carved into the side of the cool metal, an old sort of fancy cursive. It took a little more time but he was able to decipher the text:"The strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack." He read clumsily under his breath, stumbling over a few words, but Grandpa heard it all anyway."Exactly, pup. Exactly. Rudyard Kipling wrote that.""What does it mean, Grandpa?" He asked, sliding his small hand into his grandfather's as they walked."You'll understand when you're older."His grandfather was killed in a "hunting accident" the next day.





	1. And The Wolfbane Blooms

**Author's Note:**

> Note: None of this happened and none of this is real, duh :P

  
_"Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright."_

-The Wolfman 

 

 

 

Joe killed his human mother by simply being _born._

One life was given and another was taken away.

He became a murderer from his first breath and onward, almost as if he were marked for tragedy the rest of his days.

His father left long before he was born, Joe never knew him and his grandparents didn't either, so they could only assume that he was the cause of the boy's lightly freckled skin and the new loose curl of his mother’s soft ginger hair. The crinkles around his eyes when he smiled, the touch of newness to his mother's laugh. His father's touch on his life was like that of a ghost, there but not at all. 

His grandfather was killed in a _hunting accident_ when he was five years old.

The old man who was no longer a man, was buried in a ring of aconite, the periwinkle blossom stark against the old bloody land on the outskirts of their estate home. Lying alongside Joe's mother and his stillborn brothers, the ones whelped right alongside him.

A year later and his grandmother swallowed a silver bullet laced with monkshood to be with her mate. Finally following her soul to the grave. 

Joe made sure that they were buried together, it was the least he could do.

Before burning the whole place to the ground. 

The lone pack-less wolf pup was then given into the care of his Uncle Lawrence and his boyfriend Talbot, often called Tally by the child. They were the best parents he could've asked for. Uncle Lawrence was just like him, curse and all. Tally wasn't, but he was accepting nevertheless, calling them both his _dear puppies_ and cuddling with them on the couch as they watched scary movies every Friday night. They called it _mandatory family bonding time_.

As the years passed, they were happy and it never wavered, never waned unlike the moon in the skin, not even at the end.

It was Joe's first taste of real happiness that didn't come from anything supernatural. Tally and Uncle Lawrence got unofficially married when he was thirteen. He was their flower boy.

Pictures would forever adorn their mantlepiece, of all three of them in tuxedos, each of his fathers kissing one of his cheeks, pinning him between them with a delighted smile on his chapped lips, a beautiful collector’s butterfly.

He’d loved them with everything he had. 

But then _the hunters came._

Nearly every saga of his life could be cliff-noted by:  _and then the hunters came._

Tally wasn't cursed, he was human to a fault and he always had been, but he still died first. _(It took a special kind of man to fall in love with a werewolf. It was like falling in love with heartbreak)._

Protecting his son, begging for the hunters to spare him. Lying through his bloody teeth that he and Lawrence were the wolves, that their son was innocent. And when they saw him running for his life, tiny and with no hint of a beast in his eyes. Tally was _believed._ They gave him a second ruddy smile for his martyrdom, carving it into his pale alabaster neck.

He fell like a puppet with its strings cut and his last breaths burbled out from his cut windpipe. It must have been so painful. 

Joe remembered his own screaming when he understood the sound.

Uncle Lawrence was driven mad by the loss of his mate, the loss of his soul, and felt no pain as the silver bolted arrows dipped in aconite, felled him where he stood. Joe watched him in his death throes. His own molten silver eyes blank and expressionless. 

The hunters burned the house down, the only real home Joe had ever known, before stealing away into the night. 

The child was left staring quietly into the night sky, as blood pooled in the first snow of the season and he lost his pack forever, becoming a lone wolf in a single fell swoop.

The police officers who found him the next morning took him to a nearby hospital to be treated for his mild hypothermia. They ruled his uncles' deaths as the latest in the string of break-ins gone horribly wrong. The child actor didn't correct them.

 

Wolves don't howl as pack when a member dies, they spout off one by one in solitary mourning cries, the closer the bond, the longer the howl. 

When he lost his parents, Joe just _screamed._

Somewhere between a child's cry and the bloodthirsty howl of a killer. 

  
-X-

  
Rami _knew._

He’d known since _The Pacific._

Which was why it was Rami’s arms that he lay in now, pale sweaty white, cold and trembling, his gray-silver eyes rolling and rolling around in their sockets as if they were in danger of falling out.

“ _Joe_ ,” His best-friend was still frantic. “ _Joey! C’mon, please!_ Look at me, Joe! We’re almost _there, alright?”_ The basement steps were creaking, but it was scarcely audible over the rain that pounded outside. All the better with which to hide his _screams._

It was like a mantra, coming over and over from Rami's rounded lips, under his breath. _We're almost there, it's going to be alright..._ Whispered over and over until it became near incomprehensible. Joe was silent, save for the occasional groan or request for his best-friend to _just run, to get the fuck away_. Of course the stubborn older man didn't listen. _Duh._

Joe was as limp as a rag-doll, all red hair and white fabric face as Rami laid him down in the center of the cold floor.

The older actor's dark hair was damp with rain and god only knows what else, falling in his eyes as he began to clasp and lock the heavy chains around Joe's ankles and wrists with a nervous practiced ease.

Poor Joey was shaking, wet and cold on the hard concrete floor.

Every ounce of Rami screamed for him to stay put and comfort the younger man, but he also knew the only safe place for him now was _far far away_ from _The Wolf._

And that Joe probably couldn't hold _Him_ in any longer. 

"I'm _going_ now, okay?" He leaned over to press his face into that curling red hairline, damp with sweat and malaise. "I'm going to be right outside the doors. You can still hear me out there, okay?” But when he pulled away, the familiar foggy gray of Joe's eyes was gone, replaced by golden rings illuminated by _eyeshine_. That thing made _animals'_ eyes glow in the dark. 

Under the guise of best-friend of almost ten years, _The Wolf_ smiled. 

And the Egyptian actor _ran for his goddamn life._

Just barely managing to slide across the threshold and slam the door shut with a molten silver deadbolt. _Holy shit._

Joe’s dull human teeth clinked like bloody marbles against the grimy concrete floor as they poured out of his mouth, collecting in front of him like a pile of small crumpled pearls. Along with chunks and clots of lost blood, both fresh and old alike. Age turning the congealed blood as black as night. Joe’s fragile skin was being wrent apart at the seams, exposing an animal’s rough pelt underneath the gentle pillowy flesh. His knees snapped backwards first one and then the other, his cries gradually turning animalistic and mindless as Rami violently threw up, he could hear _everything_ from where he sat, experiencing his best-friend’s monthly torture once again. 

He covered his ears with trembling hands and acrid vomit puddled in his lap. 

Joe never screamed for him by name, but Rami heard it all the same. 

His best-friend who had been born a werewolf, because of a _first heir of each generation_ sort of curse, all the way from  _The Beast of Gévaudan_ that terrorized France a long long time ago. What was once the mighty protector of his family, a great honor, became an unwanted burden and a deep dark family secret. _I won't ever father kids, Ram._ He'd said one night a couple years prior during a makeshift ‘ _sleepover',_ Rami's head pillowed delicately on his bare red fuzzy chest. Back when they’d _experimented_ with one another. The Arabic man was already halfway asleep at the time, so he hadn't really thought about what was being said. _If I don't have babies biologically, then the curse dies with me._ Joe had sighed into Rami's messy floof of black wavy hair. _The curse dies with me._

A howl pierced the air, _sharp and guttural._

He gulped down a mouthful of unspewed vomit and closed his eyes. "It's just Joey." He reminded himself. Joey the chaotic disaster. Joey who needed Rami to hold his hand in the medical tent that day, when he'd needed stitches after braining himself with a gun prop on set. Joey who always cried during animal-narration movies or when the dog died in _Marley and Me_. Joey who had saved his life on set, dragging him out of the water with a single hand after the gear had nearly drowned him. _"Are you okay, Rami?"_ His best-friend _(before they were properly close)_ had asked, horrified, when all Rami had been able to see were the eyes of a beast shining in a boy's face.

Rami slowly raised his head and uncovered his ears. 

 _The Wolf_ was on the other side of the doors, breathing loudly.

He sounded _hungry_. 

It was rare that Rami got to see Joe in a fully transformed state, when the wolf part of him was in total control. He'd seen his best-friend partially transformed nearly every day, as that could be done with ease on any given date and time and Joe was an emotional guy, those transformations weren't full-moon based.

This was _different_ though. Full-moon transformations were not by _choice._

This was _forced._  

Even when the Egyptian actor did manage to help his friend through full-moons, it was usually after Joe had taken a handful of oxys or some other heavy-ass drug to knock out _The Wolf_ , just long enough for the sun to rise again, with the coming of a new day. He had to time it just right however, because his body blazed through the mortal medications like wildfire. 

But on that night however, it had just snuck up on them out of nowhere and Joe didn't have enough pills to do the trick. Nor did he have enough time to get some from some  sketchy dealer on a street corner.

This was the awful end result. 

Watching _The Wolf_ regain control once more and his beloved redheaded best-friend just kind of... _fade away_. 

Rami turned around and pressed his face to the wood, peering through a crack in the timber frame. The beast was standing semi-erect and enormous, those golden irises locked wholly on him. The gaping maw was dripping saliva, and whatever last chunks of flesh and body hair that had come from Joe’s human form still oozed out onto the floor. The creature bent and began to consume the raw bits left behind. 

Masticated hunks of human ground chuck, getting stuck in those nasty crooked yellow canines. Ew. So _disgusting_. Rami had to look away to avoid hurling again, as his pants were already dripping with puke and it stunk to high heaven. 

 _The Wolf_ just kept on eating. 

Then, as if it had heard his slow non-erratic movements just out of sight, it ran to throw itself _over and over_ against the stubborn reinforced wood that would bend, but wouldn't break. Claws trying to tear open the floor that wouldn't give. Rami didn't want to look up, certain that _The Wolf_ was going to hurt itself and then hurt Joey by proxy. 

_It's just Joe, Rami. He's not going to eat you._

His warm blue eyes flicked up quickly.

Fuzzy ears jutted out stiffly from _The Wolf's_ head and its bared lips were wet with saliva and blood. A single enormous paw was resting on the splintering wood, heady hot breaths came in pants from the beast. Rami leaned in close and for an instant, it almost looked like there was a hint of gray in those eyes. 

_Hey buddy, I know you're in there._

He reached out, disregarding all lingering fear, and put his hand over the shadow of the paw. 

  
-X-

  
Sunrise came with more howling. 

Howls and grisly snarls that turned into very human screams. 

As _The Wolf's_ ruddy fur split down the sides and down each limb, like the seams on which one might sew a stuffed doll.

Bones twisted around, snapping and breaking like waves or the rolls of thunder. Clumps of hair and flesh fell like accessories from the monster's body. As the beast writhed on the floor, crying out. _Up, down, up, down_ went its stiffened barrel chest and stomach, bouncing with tremors and something else entire. Lingering dagger claws ripped at its own body, tearing out hunks of its own pulpy tissue.

Teeth, yellowed and gnarled came out just like they came in, cloying clots and congealed black blood mixed in with the debris. 

Fresh blood was tacky in the thick red hair on the pale human chest, finally exposed once more beneath the wiry animal pelt. 

Joey’s face came back next, with its softness and light dusting of freckles. His gray eyes sitting half-mast and glassy, mouth still open and panting, his chin and most of his cheeks streaked with his own blood.

They kept puffing in and out occasionally, so Rami at least knew he was breathing. 

 _Fuck it._ There were still pieces of _The Wolf_ that lingered, the claws, the receding body hair, Joe's general corpsey demeanor; but Rami shoved past the door and as soon as he could be, he was in there, kneeling beside his once-lover. Holding a fleece blanket from upstairs to cradle his exhausted best-friend.

Rami tucked his thin arms underneath the naked man and pulled the trembling frame to his chest. Joey didn't talk to him, he was just gaping and wheezing with all he had, eyes unfocused like he was coming down from a really bad acid trip. Rami basically swaddled him up in the soft blanket he had, before lifting him and carrying him out of the bloody cage. Adrenaline-fueled strength made it easy, but it also made it hard to be gentle and Rami was worried that each little accidentally-rough movement was going to be agony, he knew that Joe’s nerve-endings were practically on fire after a transformation like that. 

“Ram?”

Joe's voice was raspy and sounded awful, but Rami nodded vehemently, they were halfway up the stairs and those red fuzzy arms were looped around his neck, resembling gummy rubber hoses. "I'm here, buddy. It was a bad one." 

"Oh." He smacked his lips and snuggled closer to the Arabic man, trusting him whole-heartedly. "Okay." Humming under his breath, some French song he'd learned from Tally. 

Rami wrestled them both into the shower, sitting in it and letting the water pound down on them both. Really good water pressure actually. There was red hair everywhere and it certainly wasn't the kind of sexy shower scene he'd been dreaming of. _Once!_ That he'd _once_ dreamt of. But he was long over that crush now. ”Hey Ram?” Joe was starting to act a little more coherent, with that floating easy smile of his. 

"Yeah?" 

The older actor was more concerned with getting the tacky blood out of his friend's red afro of chest hair.

The hot water poured down on the both of them, but there was a deep-seeded warmth present in-between them as well. Rami didn't care how he looked now, all disheveled and reminiscent of a drowned rat, because it was just _Joe_. Their bodies slotted together perfectly, even though they hadn’t been together like that in years.

“Why are werewolves better than vampires?” Cue Joe’s bright woozy smile.

Rami rolled his eyes fondly, flipping him off but still waiting for the punchline.

…. "We don’t have a problem with _steaks!”_

  
-X-

  
Rami Malek’s best-friend was a werewolf.

And strangely enough, it was not the weirdest thing about loving Joey Mazzello.

  
-X-

  
The night before Joe got the long-awaited call that casting had liked his latest audition, to portray the bassist _John Deacon of Queen_ in an upcoming biopic… he dreamt of his fathers.

Not a surprise, as they so often inhabited his nightmares.

In his mind, he was a young teen again, a young wolf grown too big for his britches, watching the snow that fell outside in beautiful flurries, pressing his small hand to the frosted over windows in their little forest haloed cottage. Serene, tranquil.

He had been drinking hot cocoa and watching old werewolf movies with his fathers, when he'd felt his Uncle Lawrence stiffen beside him. Back when he first heard the sound of footsteps in the trees and the burn of silver in his well-trained nose. 

_The hunters had come for them._

Uncle Lawrence had told Tally to run, that he would hold them off. Before anyone could argue, he was gone, a red blur lost in the trees and falling snow. Tally had rushed around and gathered up everything he could, to practically drag their shocked son outside, they hadn’t been prepared back then. They hadn't been afraid anymore. _It was what killed them._

Not all the hunters chased after Uncle Lawrence.

A silver bullet tore through Tally’s thigh and most of the muscle, rendering his leg useless as soon as they stepped off the porch, leaving them exposed. The man had screamed, collapsing onto the earth.  _"Tally!"_ The little werewolf had scrambled towards him, bare feet sliding in the slushy snow. The false bravado of youth gone from his eyes.

His son was still dressed in his _pajamas_ , Tally had thought wretchedly. He had just shaken his head then, gripping fistfuls of the damp red snow collecting around his body. And forced a bloody smile to his lips, as his son started to tug him desperately to his feet once more, hunters closing in around them. Joe was crying so hard that he was trembling, and the tears were freezing like fractals of new ice on a windowpane, his toes were bone white with cold. “Tally, get up, please, we need to run now! _Tally!"_ Christmas was in a few days. His little boy was almost fourteen. He was such a big boy now. Tears were frosting on his own cheeks. 

Tally felt everything melting away into the snow along with his lifeblood. His son’s first day of high-school, his first crush, his prom, his graduation, getting married, college acceptance, falling in love, having a child of his own. He tried to imagine his boy as a man, all red hair and his crooked smile. “Tally, please!" _No, baby no._ His wails were going to attract the hunters, Tally had to think fast. 

_He smiled._

_Everything is going to be okay, baby boy. I love you so so much._

_“Joey_ , do you hear the cars on the road? Listen hard, do you hear them?" 

His teenage son screwed up his face really hard, before nodding. 

"Good. I need to go there, I need you to run until you get to the road and wait for the police, okay? Blue and white cars.”

The same colors that his boy's lips were turning. 

“ _Tally_ …” It came out as broken whine. Tears falling unheeded. “I’ll _carry_ you. Don’t make me _go_ …”

“I love you, Joseph.” _Blood or not, you have always been my son._

He pushed his boy roughly, over and over with all he had, _go go go._ Until the sniffling little werewolf finally started running. It was like music to his ears, a final farewell, the sound of his son's paws falling over and over in the muffling snow. _Faster_ , he tried to push his son mentally. _Faster, baby, run faster._ When the sound finally faded from his dull human ears, he pushed himself to stand up on his one good leg. The blood puddling beneath him. He looked up to the sky, pleading. _Let kind humans find my son, please, let kind humans find my boy._

Before he grabbed a handful of bloody snow and started to scream. 

He staggered back towards the cottage, using his blood and the snow to mark up trees and confuse the hell out of the hunters' bloodhounds and hunting dogs. It was slow going, he was limping something awful. But the louder he was, the more time his baby had to get away. 

And when he finally found himself eye-to-eye with the hunters, he pled with them, lied through his fucking teeth. His son was an _innocent_ , he and Lawrence were the wolves. Joey was _human_.

They believed him.

He bled out into the snow with his throat slit, but they _believed_ him.

His son was _safe_.

Lawrence died in a seizure of matted fur and blood, a mottled half-wolf, half-man monstrosity, deformed and sickening. His tongue lolling out of his cavernous mouth and back broken with an arrow that pinned him to the earth. They spit on him. Pissed on him. All while he was still alive, whimpering from the bloody hole where his throat used to be. Called him a _monster._

And maybe he was one, maybe he was a _Beast,_ like the one who came before him. 

But the beast had a child he loved with all his heart and a mate he lived with in peace. The hunters were the ones who had killed their own kind. So to quoth _The Hunchback of Notre Dame: who is the monster and who is the man?_

Joe woke up in a cold sweat, trembling as he stared at the bass guitar he’d borrowed from a friend, case and all, sitting propped up against the wall. Splayed across his lap were old photographs and mementos from his family’s old country estate. They had once belonged to his mother, the woman he’d never known. Once he first heard about John Deacon and the tentative interest in him perhaps playing the man, he’d researched all he could.

Suffice to say, coming face to face with a man who resembled him such a frightful amount had been _jarring_ to say the least.

_1983, where was Queen in 1983?_

In London, Google told him helpfully, working on an album.

_Where had his mother been?_

Studying at Imperial College in London.

But it had to be a _coincidence_ , there was no way. John Deacon had been happily married with several children in 1983.

Or at least, that was what Joe had thought. Until he’d found a photo, bent in the middle and aged with time, of his mother and the infamous John Deacon himself. They were sitting outside some sort of pub, smiling and waving to the person taking the photo, too happy. On the back was: _Ginny and John, January 1983._

_Shit._

_Had his mother honestly fucked a British rockstar? Seriously?_

Surely, she’d known how Joe would be born? That as her firstborn child of the newest generation, he would be born a _Wolf._

_Maybe that was why she didn’t stay, why she didn’t... tell him._

Came home to give birth and die, leaving her only living son to be passed about and raised as a creature of myth and legend, reared by nature and empty hands.

_If John really was his father, would auditioning really be the best idea?_

That kind of proximity could mean the truth coming out in unexpected ways, _both_ truths that he had hidden inside his soul. But when had Joe actually listened that tiny voice in his head that tried to keep him from making an ass of himself?

 _Of course_ he auditioned and while there, learned that apparently, John wasn’t even _part_ of the movie, there were no plans for him to be anywhere on set anytime soon. Only the rest of Queen, since John had become a bit of a recluse in his later years, living a calm and collected blissful life with his chosen family.

Joe didn’t even need to play bass, apparently just the sight of his face and the way he spoke was enough to convince them that he could play the role.

Another movie with Rami, another show to put on.

It was probably the stupidest thing he had ever done.

But eh, how much time did he really have left anyway?

_The hunters would come soon enough._

_The hunters always came._

  
_-_ X-

  
“ _Silver bullets and a stake in the heart_  
_But the cross still awakens my heart_  
_I'm the freak of nature that's all_  
_Darling it's not the way that you are.”_

― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

 


	2. Prayers By Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More wolfy Joe!!!! :DDDDD

_“The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over, my son. Now you will find peace.”_

-The Wolfman

 

  
Ginny Mazzello-Valet got her first period when she was thirteen years old. 

By that point, both her sisters and most of her friends had already had their first bleedings. So she just swallowed a couple of ibuprofen tablets and took some of Thorn’s supplies without a fuss. Her parents had never made a big deal about either of her sisters starting their cycles so she'd expected the same treatment and she got it... from her mother. Her _father_ , on the other hand, started acting strange. He took her out for ice-cream of all things and they sat in the car for a long long time. Her father staring out at the trees that blanketed the property. She couldn't understand it. 

"Virginia, never have biological children." 

 _Huh?_ She certainly hadn't been expecting that. 

And he never ever called her _Virginia._

"Why Dad? What's the big deal?" Her pink nose scrunched up and eyes alight with confusion.

Her father just tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Your sisters... They don't carry my blood. Your brother will never have biological children of his own.” _Carry_ , like it was a hefty weight, a burden instead of a gift. Ginny had just nodded slowly, tugging uncomfortably at her sky-blue hoodie, stolen from Lawrence, and staring at her Dad's white knuckled grip. 

"Yes I know, Thorn and Em are adopted and Rency is gay. What does that have to do with me having kids?"

"Listen." He looked over with those odd orange eyes of his. The kind that seeming to glint and glow in the darkness. She bit her bottom lip. "I never said you couldn't have children, darling. Just not _biologically_." His eyes tore away from hers and a cold shiver went down her spine. "Please, trust me. You are the only one of my children who carries my blood and will _pass it on._ I am a firstborn _Valet blood-child_ , and you must never have another. _Please_." Ginny had never heard her father beg for anything and certainly not as desperately as he was now. She had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but she agreed nevertheless. Sometimes parents were just weird and if it set her father at ease...

"Sure Dad, okay. I'll never have any biological children." 

Why would she _want to_ anyway?

Her Joseph would be born a handful of years later.

Born as the first snow of the year blanketed the earth and the full-moon shone bright in the sky, long after it was meant to have set. 

She held her son as she bled her lifeblood into the grass below, understanding her father’s wish as animal eyes stared back at her from her beautiful son’s face. A face with hints of herself and John hidden in its depths. The only ever male love in her life.

Her oldest and only living child.

And so another firstborn _Valet blood-child_ came to be.

Ginny Mazzello-Valet took her last breath so Joe could take his first.

  
-X-

  
They needed to stop doing this.

Joe reached up to cup Rami’s head and press an achingly soft kiss to the exposed hairline tucked just below his chin.

They couldn’t do this anymore, they weren’t _together_ anymore.

But fuck it, _The Wolf_ inside of him was screaming for the contrary to be true. _The Wolf_ inside of him had been Rami’s for years, as only the man in his arms could turn an angry bloodthirsty beast into a loving puppy. _Fuck,_ he’d be Rami’s puppy for all his life if the Egyptian man only asked. _You would steal his only chance at an ordinary life. You know what happens to the innocents who fall in love with wolves. You know what happened to Tally._ The voice in his head reminded him. 

_Tally._

_Rami would not be his Tally_.

Joe pressed another kiss onto the warm clingy octopus that his best-friend had become. _I will love you for all my life. But you deserve to have one of your own._

Rami still wore the ring that Joe gave him when the filming of _The Pacific_ had wrapped. When he’d still thought he could have the beautiful man in his arms as his mate. The ring was a pair of lovely ivory hands cradling a smooth round full moon in place of a diamond, milky white and almost as lovely as the olive-toned face of the man it adorned. It was called an _Oracle Ring._

And after all the years between them, Rami had never taken it off.

He remembered being young and almost as in love as he was now, holding Rami in the same position as he told the story of _The Wolf._

"One day, about two hundred or so years ago, there were two peasant girls, sisters, who were walking through the fields of Gévaudan, France. The older sister was named Marie-Jeanne and the younger was Thérèse. They came upon the river Desges and were about to cross, when suddenly an enormous beast came from the underbrush and attacked Marie-Jeanne." It was a story he'd heard many times by many different people. But Rami was enraptured, even sleepy as he was.

"The Beast wasn't any ordinary animal. It was a wolf the size of a fully grown Grizzly, at least. It could stand up on its hind legs and could've swallowed her whole in one go. But Marie-Jeanne was unafraid. She took up her makeshift spear and buried it in the chest of the monster. Saving both herself and her little sister. She was heralded as an Amazon, as the _Maid of Gévaudan_ , the second Joan of Arc. There's a statue of her in Auvers, still locked in mortal combat with the Beast. But... some say that the Beast was actually a _loup-garou._ " 

Those gentle blue eyes looked surprised, but very much awake as he yawned around the question. _“Loup-garou?"_

"A _werewolf_ in French mythos, it’s what my Tally called us. What we were called when my Grandfather was young...” His voice faltered then and he closed his eyes. “She didn’t kill him though, not at first, despite what the legend says.”

“… _She fell in love with him."_ That was the tale his Uncle Lawrence had told him, a long long time ago. _Tally had been just like Marie-Jeanne. He too had loved a wolf._

"...There are other werewolves, other monsters and other family lines. But that's where mine began. The Beast's true name was René and he had been born of a human man and a female wolf. He would only change into his true form beneath the light of the moon, and he was driven insane when he changed, by both his mixed blood and the moonlight. But she grew to love him as a human, even when she feared him as a wolf. She thought she could control him during the full-moons. That somehow they could find a way to be together." He sheepishly rubbed at the back of his neck. "That didn't work out so well..." 

"He slaughtered more than half of their village during the full-moon. She was forced to kill him and in doing so, discovered the only way _to kill a werewolf."_

Joe reached down and felt under the bed, grabbing his grandfather’s old cane, the one that he only used when the full-moons were drawing near and his body began to feel as though it were being torn to pieces with every breath, when he was rendered hardly able to stand on his own. The bullet pendant was wrapped tightly around the carved wolf’s head and Joe reached his hand upwards to grasp at the silver piece, yet the moment his bare skin brushed the carving laced with monkshood he damn near _screamed._ It was like touching an open flame.

His skin even smoked like kindling at the contact.

But still, he unscrewed the top and revealed the pure silver blade beneath. 

"You must use a pure silver blade laced with wolfsbane to cleave off the head, stuff the body full of garlic and more wolfsbane, bury the head and throw the body down a rushing river. But it has to be done when the body is in humanoid form." He recapped the cane with his blistered skin. 

"She killed him, so she became the first hunter of our kind. But the unborn baby inside her, _René's child,_ assured our survival. She became the first _mother_ and the first _hunter_ all at once. With each generation, we each gained more control over the wolf blood inside us... So I can transform whenever I please, but on the full-moons I have no _choice_ … We can’t hide our piece of the Beast." There was blood beneath his nails. 

" _Show me_." Rami had breathed out like a sigh.

His then-lover had never demanded anything like that from him before.

So Joe did, he allowed wolfish teeth to fill his mouth, for his eyes to glow an animalistic orange-gold, for his ears to sharpen into points and his nose to extend from his face until it was almost catlike in appearance. His ruddy widow's peak became marked. His nails turned to claws and he resisted the urge to dig them into his thighs. But still, Rami kept his soft hands on Joe's cheeks, not having a panic attack, not even frightened by the sight. 

“…I can still see you in there, Joey." He whispered, as if the sound would stir the air between them irreparably.

When they kissed Joe didn't know what to do. The only ones who had ever seen and loved that face were his fathers, his grandparents, perhaps even his mother. He had never expected such a reaction from Rami.

"It's still _you.”_

Was it any wonder that he loved the Egyptian actor as much as he did?

  
-X-

  
At ten years old, Joe had been an _orphan._

At ten years old, his Grandfather had been an _Alpha._

  
Lupercalia Valet had stood silently on _The Looking Place_ as he flanked his own Grandmother and watched with bated breath, as their pack-mates all dropped, one by one. 

Each kneeling, with their pale heads tilted dramatically to flash their carotids and growing eyes closed, trembling where they bent. 

Submitting. 

Exposing their most vulnerable parts to their Alpha. _The Queen of the Night, Chieftess of the Loup-garoux, Huntress Supreme: Lady Akasha Valet._

Lupercalia's Grandmother. 

Whose hair would never grow white, whose skin would never wrinkle or yellow with age. She would forever be young, forever be beautiful. Just like all of the Loup-garoux. 

Yet she was already being to round the curve of her second century in power. Ergo, like the changing of the seasons, her time as Alpha was slowly coming to an end. It would be time soon for the next phase of the moon, the next phase in the cycle. The birth of a new Alpha. The pack had been worried about _The Choosing_ for a very long time.

As Akasha and her beloved mate had produced only one child, a son. A born beta from his first cry. That same beta son had mated with an omega boy of all the shames and together they produced a large, healthy litter. A litter of three human girls and a tiny runt of a _Valet blood-son_ whose moon markings couldn't even be properly identified for a week. Imagine their shock and amazement when they saw the scorch marks of a glowing white full-moon, set deeply between his tiny curled shoulder blades, it would glow for a single night, then fade as his palms would burn with _The Mark of The Beast._

An Alpha cub.  

Celebrations had lasted for weeks afterward. Each member of the pack came in ceremonial attire to scent the newest arrival and to submit to their future leader. He was christened _Lord Lupercalia Valet._

And there he stood at ten years old. As his Grandmother removed one small piece of her heavy chained jewelry and slipped it over his head. A long golden thread with a silver bullet pendant, his father’s token. The mark of a _Loup-garou Alpha,_ accepted by his predecessor as heir. Accepted by his people as protector and leader. 

"My grandson Lupercalia!" Akasha had announced, her voice so feral and commanding that no wolf dare disobey it. "Beauty of Paris, child of our blood, he will lead forevermore! Call for your _brother!"_ Each head tilted back obediently and began to howl. Despite human visage, the howls from the men, women and children before him were animalistic and would've been terrifying to any casual observer. "Call for your _son!"_ The howls got more desperate, frantic to please. But not to please Akasha, to please him. "Call for your _father!"_ The howls turned deep and pained as the change took over, cries swallowed up his pack-mates. The spirits of the wild coming to take hold. "Call for your _One!"_

One true leader. One true Alpha. One true Prince. Born of the one true bloodline. 

He was the _One._

And he felt his Grandmother's clawed hands on his back as she shoved him off _The Looking Place_ , down the cliff side. Hurtling towards certain death. 

Or what would've been, had he not been a _Loup-garou._

The change happened while he was falling. He felt his human skin melt away, his bones shifting and crunching and warping themselves to fit inside a new skin, everything around him was bathed in an iridescent white light playing behind his eyes. They burned like fire and brimstone, but despite it all, everything was warm and soothing, never-mind the pain of his organs moving about inside of him and violently reshaping around the bloody edges. He was at peace, as natural transformation often was, free of the full-moon’s bindings, gave way to the beast he held within. He could hear the howls, the ceremonial drumbeat of his heart in his ears. As his readymade paws hit the ground and his own head knocked back on reflex. 

His howled his acceptance, he howled his relief. And then he ran, his subjects parting like Moses to the Red Sea, as he led the way into the forest, beginning the ceremonial hunt. 

_A ten-year-old human was a child, yes._

_But a ten-year-old wolf was the leader of his pack._

  
Centuries would turn his world to dust and he would be giving his father’s pendant to a grandson who _would_ have been Alpha of his own pack. Had times been different.

Had _the hunters not come._

Cursed with the Valet blood he’d hoped would end with his daughter, but she had borne a living son.

A packless child.

A fatherless child.

 _Joseph Francis Lupercalia Mazzello-Valet_ , would come into their world surrounded by death. Their line would die with him.

The Valet Wolves would cease to exist.

Other Wolf lines would live on perhaps, other places, other times, but The Valet Wolves would be lost forevermore.

It was what Marie-Jeanne would have wanted.

  
-X-

  
Joe met his cast-mates and the band on the same day, Rami by his side.

Ever since discovering the picture and Joe’s paternal suspicions, the Egyptian man had been existing in an open-mouthed state of constant shock that seemed to have no sign of abating. _“But you… And he… And she…_ ” Gesturing wildly with his hands as he mumbled. Joe absentmindedly grabbed one with those predatory reflexes of his, to prevent the inevitable accidental punch to his groin, and laced their fingers together. Rami seemed to calm for a moment at the contact.

“Joey, are you sure this is a good idea?” Big blue eyes full of concern.

_Nope, this is going to go horribly._

Joe just shrugged with a little _fuck-it_ smile.

At least he had Rami, he could do anything with Rami at his side, he could have conquered the whole world.

The conference room was just about full to bursting with everyone crammed inside.

Joe ended up shaking the hands of countless people, and then forgetting their names almost as soon as they stepped aside. The only ones that stuck with him were the surprisingly toned blonde named Ben, who was playing Roger Taylor. And Gwilym, the tall skinny man with dark hair and a five-o’clock shadow playing Brian May. The four men were practically sequestered to one area of the room and were soon talking a mile a minute together. Joe was smiling and then laughing as soon as Gwil went to sit down and the chair in question, raced past his ass, leaving that bony bum on the floor with an audible _plop._  The werewolf was near-wheezing with laughter as he leaned down across the table to tug the taller man into a standing position once more, with his one free hand.

“Whoa!” Blue eyes widened with surprise, big as robin eggs, as the beanpole found himself standing once more. “You’re _strong._ ” Paired with a friendly smile.

“I try.” Joe’s nose crinkled as he smiled and his tongue poked out the corner of his mouth, playing peekaboo.

His other hand was still clasped in Rami’s though, as the older man talked excitedly to Ben about one thing or another, gestating with Joe's hand as well. The younger had spent nearly a decade with that hand in his and was certainly not going to let go anytime soon.

Even as his vision was filled with snowy white curls and a soft smile, yet another crazy tall man to shake his hand and tell him how excited he was to have him on the project. Dr. Brian May _himself._ Joe swallowed sharply to prevent himself from squealing and jumping up and down like a little girl on a sugar-high.

Right after him was Roger Taylor, with his messy short white hair and its stubborn threads of lasting blonde, prescription sunglasses shielding those token blue eyes. “You’re the kid playing Deaks, right?”

_Kid? He was thirty-five._

“Yessir, that’s me.” Another easy rolling laugh slipping past his lips outside of his control, those were the best at dissipating tension.

He wasn’t expecting to be swept up in a tight hug mere moments afterwards, by a man with kind brown eyes and temples of white in his short black hair, crinkles around his eyes and a vaguely soft middle. “Hello, darling! Goodness you could be Deaky’s _twin!_ You look exactly like he did when he was a boy!”

Gentle hands turned his face this way and that.

Joe didn’t mind, how could one scorn the touch of a living icon? Especially _Freddie Mercury himself._

“Thank you for the compliment, Mr. Mercury.”

Yes, he did know how to be polite _Rami,_ thank you very much.

“Bah!” A wave of a liver-spotted hand. “Just call me _Freddie_ , dear.” Those uniquely perceptive dark eyes still staring at him funny, as if looking for someone or something else in the curves of his face and the lines that made up his countenance.

“Then please call me _Joe._ ” A wicked smile with no hint of _The Wolf_ in sight, playing demurely on his lips.

“Well Joe, you’re in for a _treat!_ I convinced Deaky to come by and meet with you all!” Freddie clapped at his own brand of Deacon prowess and Joe felt the floor beneath him begin to rock, as if he were precariously positioned on a sinking ship, or perhaps standing on a tiny tug-boat in the middle of a hurricane. _Fuck. No. No. He wasn’t even supposed to be involved with the project. No. Fuck!_

“I thought John wasn’t involved with the project?” He heard Rami ask above the bloody roar in his ears.

Freddie paused for a moment to answer, but Roger beat him to the punch. “He _isn’t._ But our Freddie can convince John of just about anything, it’s why we have another reunion concert every year and produce new records occasionally. Deaky will do _anything_ Freddie asks of him.” Roger batted his eyelashes as he leaned in to rest his head on his dear friend’s shoulder, the former frontman shoving him off with a little low groan and eye-roll.

When Mr. Taylor stumbled back slightly with an affronted grunt, it was to Freddie’s critical eye and judging gaze. “Ooo, better be careful Roggie, wouldn’t want to break a hip now, would we, love? You are getting _on_ in years...”

“You’re _older than me_ , you sod!”

All the while a poor long-suffering Brian rolled his eyes fondly at the two idiots in his keeping.

While Joe was too busy growing near-frozen where he stood, a veritable ice fixture, silver eyes locked with that of an old man who had just quietly slipped into the room unbeknownst to anyone else at first, just as quietly and unassumingly as he had first come into Joe’s life. The soft old man with a grey receding hairline and round caring eyes. Who was quickly surrounded by the other men that he’d loved for decades upon decades, Freddie squishing him into a hug that oozed of familiarity as Brian started blabbing about something or another, and Roger started tapping an absentminded drumbeat on John's jumper-covered shoulder. Joe couldn't blame the old man for not even _noticing_ the redheaded actor in the corner of the room, who just couldn’t tear his suspiciously glowing eyes away.

 _The Wolf_ inside of him screamed for him to go to his sire, to submit to the one who had created him. But he didn’t dare move.

The only thing keeping him sane was Rami’s grounding hand in his, as his world shifted beneath his feet.

_“Hello all, I’m John Deacon.”_

  
-X-

  
_"Boys and girls of every age_  
_Wouldn't you like to see something strange?_

 _This is Halloween, this is Halloween_  
_Pumpkins scream in the dead of night..._

 _This is Halloween, everybody make a scene_  
_Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright..._  
_It's our town, everybody scream_  
_In this town of Halloween..._

 _I am the one hiding under your bed_  
_Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red..."_

 _\- "This is Halloween"_ by Marilyn Manson _(A Nightmare Before Christmas)._

 

 


	3. A Good Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of sad and very little story progression in this one! <333 Sorry babes! :DD

_“Red Riding Hood,_  
_Tripping through the shady wood_  
_Of a summer's morning,_  
_Stop a bit Red Riding Hood,_  
_Hear a friendly warning..._

 _There's a wolf who prowls about,_  
_Talkative and smiling,_  
_You would never find him out,_  
_He is too beguiling._

 _Should you meet him, Little One,_  
_Do not stay to chatter,_  
_From the wicked creature run_  
_Fast as you can patter."_

-Anna Fuller

 

 

It was probably a strange comparison, but meeting his Dad felt like being a flyer on his _High-School Cheerleading squad_ again, only falling without a mat to catch him this time.

_(Because after five minutes with the guy, there was little doubt in his mind of his sire’s identity)._

He closed his eyes to remember the sensation, it was supposed to be a _kick full basket toss._

Instead it was Joe's face smashing into the floor from twenty goddamn feet in the air. 

_Ouchie._

He knew that he wasn't going to be saved from his free-fall, in the very moment he looked down and saw his girls standing too far apart. Their arms were too stretched out and weren't sitting in a proper basket. _Fuck._ He was going to fall right through that poor excuse of a cradle or tumble right out. His front spotter was too far to the left as well.

So he already knew it was going to be a buster as he fell. _Don't kick them in the face, don't change. Don't kick them in the face, don't change. Stay tight, stay tight, stay tight. Don't kick them-- **SPLAT.**_

Ooo, man that felt _awful._ He did an extra half-turn and bounced right out of the basket. His front spot wasn't in a position to slow him down or take the hit and so when he came down, it was elbows and face first. Ass over tit. 

He heard a muffled _crunch._

Oh and there went his _nose._

Because unfortunately, as only acting captain for his High-School’s shitty spirit/cheer squad since his best-friend’s departure, his stunt group was always in front. And he was point flyer now, which meant he was able to fall straight onto the waxed hardwood floor instead of the soft mats they'd put down earlier. _Lucky him_. 

A _kick full toss_ was always a recipe for disaster, getting thrown up with just enough time to high kick in midair, catch his own foot and spin into the correct position as he plummeted downwards into the waiting arms of his bases and spotters. Of course he was more worried about kicking in his front teeth than kissing the floor, but both were dangers nevertheless. 

His next reaction, after realizing that odd warm feeling was actually blood seeping down his face, was the mad dash to preserve his cheer uniform.

Even though it was ugly as a sin. _(Seriously, who picked blue, white and yellow as a school motif? Their mascot was an antelope for fuck's sake.)_

He literally destroyed one of those once a week.

It was getting old. 

He cupped his hands to cradle his gushing nose and thanked his lucky stars that he hadn't worn his fake glasses, and that his freaky wolf teeth hadn't punched through his bottom lip like last time. _DIY piercings._ He hid his face just in case though, not wanting to scare any of his girls until his dilated animal nose bridge flattened and his eyes weren't the kind you saw glowing underneath your bed at night. 

" _Princey!"_

_(Yes, that was his squad nickname. No, he had no idea where it had come from. They had tried calling him Puppy at the beginning, but that was a never-happening-thing and he'd aggressively told them so. Hands on his rounded hips and everything.)_

Sally was at his side in an instant. 

His loyal backspot Sal who would've happily thrown her body between his and the floor, having taken the _Never-Let-Your-Flyer-Touch-The-Ground_ mentality to heart since day one. Alas, he had fallen _forwards_ and catching him was impossible for her. 

But it didn't assuage her guilt in the slightest. He could see it written all over her face. They'd been in the same stunt group since he’d joined the squad during his first week at school freshman year, all chubby and shy. Sal was a junior and basically his cheer big sister. She, Joe, Betty and Cindy were the unstoppable troupe, together since the beginning, the one almost always guaranteed to _bring it_ with every routine. Jessie was his new front-spot, replacing Liz who would've never let him eat it like that.

But poor Jess was still just getting used to the swing of things, having never been a front spotter before.

So it was _okay,_ better _him_ getting smashed-in front teeth than one of his human girls. 

Once everything had melted back into something vaguely humanoid, he blinked up at Sally, the blood already slowing. _Yay, Werewolf healing!_

Cindy had the first-aid kit opened, and all but _slammed_ a fistful of gauze onto his face. He just about choked on impact. _Fuck._ He appreciated the sentiment, but maybe not the _force._  

"How many fingers, Princey?" Betty was waving her whole hand in front of his face. _Slow down, Bets._

"Should I get the nurse?" 

"Does he have a concussion?" 

"Is his nose bleeding?" 

"Is anything broken?" 

The girls were all hovering over him like a cloud of nervous honeybees. And it only took Joe nodding with a thumbs-up before Sally turned on Jess, a vein twitching in her forehead.

"Where the hell were you?”

As his present day self resisted the urge to scream it at Queen’s aging bassist now. _"Where the hell were you?”_

“…  _Joe?”_ Rami kept snapping his tan fingers in front of his ex-boyfriend’s red stubbly face and looking at him with the purest unadulterated concern in those robin-egg blue eyes.

The werewolf snapped back into the present with an easy smile and resisted the urge to plant one on the Egyptian actor’s newly shaven cheek.

“Yes, my soul, my essence, my one true Rami Malek?”

Which would have been almost romantic, if he hadn’t knowingly mispronounced his best-friend’s name as _Rayme Mahleek._

The older actor rolled his eyes and brushed a few errant red tufts of hair out of Joe’s petulant eyes. “ _Hardy har har,”_ Though the false laugh didn’t even come close to reaching his eyes. “Are you okay?” By which Joe heard: _Did you sleep enough last night? Are you still sore from last week’s change? Did you eat enough for breakfast? Are you hungry? I’ll get you something quick from the vending machine._

Joe hastily closed the small space between them by wrapping his arms around Rami’s narrow middle and smiling up at him. “I’m _fine_ , Ram-Ram.” Reaching up to poke at the little wrinkles between his best-friend’s dark eyebrows, that he only got whenever he was worried about something. “But we should probably get food soon.” Then adding, pitched a bit lower. “That pretty boy Ben is looking pretty _tasty_ right about now.” Pointedly licking his lips and wholly unsurprised when his best-friend tried to shove him off the seat. _Cause and effect, baby._

But no, Joe was not a cannibal.

Wait, would that even count as cannibalism?

When he wasn’t actually human?

Well, he was _half-human. So… maybe?_

Was partial-cannibalism a thing?

But luckily, he didn't have to find out.

As if reading their minds, or perhaps the very audible growling of Gwil’s stomach, Brian stood up to shepherd the band and mock-band out of the room, with promises of greasy diner food and getting to know each other properly.

While the record executives and directors and producers all argued over laminated pages of something or another, that Joe couldn’t have cared less about.

But he did force himself to fall into step beside one _John Richard Deacon,_ a hopeful look in his silver eyes.

 _You can’t do this movie and not tell him, Joseph._ The voice in his head reminded him, sounding remarkably like Rami. _If he finds out on his own, shit is going to hit the fan._

_Fuck… what if the **press** finds out before John?_

_What if John’s **wife** finds out before John?_

_His kids… his family… all put in jeopardy because of Joe’s very fucking existence…_

The werewolf felt sick at the mere thought of all the ramifications of his shitty choice, what it would mean for the lives of the people around him. _He should have never signed onto the project. Was it too late to back out?_

“John?” The _Birdman_ of Queen turned his head and regarded Joe thoughtfully, they had barely been introduced. “Can we talk?”

  
-X-

  
Joey Mazzello, officially twelve years old and exhausted beyond all words, sat in a bloody bathtub at three-am bandaging his oozy wounds. 

His last full-moon change had been pretty rough.

And due to being chained up in an old marble crypt beneath their home for the majority of it, the only person he could've torn into with those nasty claws was himself. _Ugh_. Full-moons just sucked _one-hundred-percent._ Transforming during any other time was fine, doable.

Well, it _hurt_ yeah, but nothing he couldn't handle.

While full-moon transformations always made him go a crazy just from the _pain alone,_ it was like liquid fire replacing his blood, one steaming vat at a time. Thankfully, it was getting a little better now. Or well, he was getting better at _hiding_ it that is. He could control himself at any other time, no problem, but those full-moons just took a lot more work... and a lot of raw meat to chew on, _(or illegal prescription pills to pop, as he would find out in his later years)._

He packed a handful of sticky dittany leaves, fat little green hearts speckled with white, into the biggest wound on his stomach, using an tan ACE bandage to hold it all down, around and around it went. 

Then he jumped nearly a foot in the air, dislodging the rough wrapping around his thigh, as his enormous portable phone buzzed on the corner of the tub. _Damn werewolf senses._ It was Uncle Lawrence, he and Tally were forced to go out of town because of some weird supernatural stuff, Joey didn't even need to check the caller ID and only paused to wipe most of the blood off his hands. 

“Hello, pup!” The tiny redhead smiled unconsciously at the sound of his uncle’s exhausted voice, forcefully chipper at _the Witching Hour,_ even post-transformation.

"Hey Uncle Rency." God, even _he_ sounded rough. _Ew._

"...How _bad_ is it?" There was thread of concern in that usually happy voice.

"About a four out of ten. Bad one on my tummy, gross one on my thigh, lots of bruises and scrapes on my feet and a couple nicks on my hands. Nothing major, most of it should be healed by tonight." 

"Walking's gonna be hell though." It wasn't even a question.

He’d have to borrow the cane.

The little boy sighed and leaned back, nodding despite the fact that his uncle couldn’t see him, unfortunately the tub was still full of his spilt blood and he slid down in it like a hyper kid on a slip-in-slide. Bonking his head hard on the porcelain finish and matting his hair even further with blood. Yay. Werewolf chic.

“Are _you_ okay, Uncle Rency?”

There was a pause until finally a weary, but fond, “I’ll live.” forced itself past the older werewolf’s lips.

“That’s not an answer, _Uncle Rency.”_ Stretching every single consonant. 

“Okay, okay. _Fine,_ you caught me. It’s Tally, he’s driving me crazy. He’s running off nothing but coffee and pure energy drinks by this point and I've watched everything on hotel cable. Seriously, I’m currently re-watching the Swedish version of _Let Me In."_

“The one where you can see that Eli's dick got cut off?" 

"The very same." 

Joey huffed a laugh and shifted a little, whimpering despite himself, like a kicked puppy as he added pressure to the long gouge on his tummy. All the smaller ones had finished bleeding and were healing up nicely. Even the one on his thigh was only sluggishly weeping still. But his belly wound was just not having it. Every time he pressed down on it the _squelching_ sound alone made him want to hurl. His brain wasn't fuzzy in the slightest, not dulled against the pain like a normal kid’s would've been, he felt every goddamn thing with the sharpest fight-or-flight clarity. 

"...Talk to me, Puppy! Come on, please. You said it wasn't bad this time! You _said so!"_

Joey wheezed a couple times before rasping out: "It's not _bad,_ Uncle Rency. You're just being _dramatic."_ As usual. _I didn't want you to worry because you couldn't be here._

"Is it the one on your stomach?" His loving uncle’s voice was hard around the edges, starting to fray. 

The child actor hummed his affirmative.

God, he was so tired, the tacky blood made his cheek stick to the inside of the bathtub with its carved wolf paws instead of lion’s.

"Are you holding pressure on it with the dittany? Bandages too?" Uncle Lawrence was furtively shouting into the phone, as if terrified that if he stopped speaking Joey would reactively die or something. _(As if. His first couple full-moons had definitely been worse than this)._

"Yes, I'm not stupid. Just bloody and tired." 

He heard the tell-tale cacophony of packing and the zipping of suitcases. “Okay pup, change of plans. We’re coming to you now.” As well as a muffled argument between his two beloved fathers:

_"You're my Renfield: be seen, not heard."_

_"Yes Master... but last time I checked, you weren't Dracula."_

Everything dropped at once when they realized that their baby boy needed them.

Even as bloody and exhausted as he was, Joey smiled.

“You don’t have to come home. I’m okay.”

“...Joey?”

The little boy hummed again, his eyes slipping closed outside of his control.

“Do me a favor and take a little nap, okay? We’ll be there when you wake up.”

And they were.

They always were.

  
-X-

  
_"I suppose I should begin this with an apology._

_To my truest loves: John, Ronnie, I hope you don't despise me for what you read in this letter. My love for you both, decorates every single word, and colors every phrase. To my brothers: Freddie, Brian and Roger, and my sisters: Mary, Dom and Chrissie, as well as those foolish enough to befriend a lonely girl, I beg mercy. For I never meant to wrong you as I have now._

_I'm so sorry._

_My father once told me that history never remembers the sordid truth of any matter. Which is how my family was allowed to survive for so long, hidden in the spaces where no one dared to look._

_But I owe so much to all of you, enough to share with you all my greatest failings, not just as a woman... but as the cursed daughter with monster’s blood in which I was born._

_History remembers us as ordinary men and women, just like you will remember me or perhaps forget me entirely, it would be merciful to let my sorrowful tale be lost to the ravages of time. Poignantly so._

_The thing is Deaky, Ron, and the wonderful Queen family I was adopted by, telling you lot anything is such a risk._

_A risk for all of you and yes, a risk the baby I’m carrying._

_The hunters can never know the truth in these pages and ergo, humans can’t know for the same reason. As unlike my kin, we never know what a kind human will become. It’s why I didn’t tell you all the story of Marie-Jeanne Valet earlier and what she created._

_Her blood is in my veins. Her blood mixed with that of a Beast. And that, my loves, is where the trouble lies…_ ”

 

Ginny Mazzello-Valet pressed the red wax sealed letter, thick and far past overfilled, into the warm space she had just vacated on their soft bed. 

John and Ronnie slept on.

He was curled around her as she faced outward, her soft blonde hair obscuring her lovely snowy features, cheeks still unhealthily rosy as she'd just gotten over a chill.

Ginny had known since the beginning, since the first day she’d bumped into a softly smiling bassist in a little quaint bookshop and met the lovely girl who smelled of lilac and had pearls for eyes, that she was never going to be able to keep them. To hold them in her arms forever. But the years had just gone by so _fast._

Her darling Veronica was worn now, tired after so many difficult pregnancies. Her eyes were lined and her hair grew strands of silver in some places. Although she still remained just as beautiful to Ginny as the night they'd first met. Candlelight warming them as they’d eaten dinner together at some greasy pub. So many years and Ronnie was still her sun and stars. 

Her darling Deaky had light and deepening frown lines around his mouth and grey beginning to creep through his temples. Ginny would still kiss them lovingly despite it all and the pangs she felt deep inside her heart. He would blame himself of course, the glutton for punishment he was, long after all the anger and betrayal would abate, he would be horrified. For so many years with someone could never truly be washed away, even by every sorrowful secret coming to light. 

It was dark outside and she could feel the press of her growing belly beneath her hand, her sleeping pup was curled up in there, that tiny light was not going to be invisible to everyone else for much longer.

She still couldn’t tell John or Ronica.

If she told them, she would never be able to let them go.

Or keep them safe. Keep any of them safe.

Every wolf knew what would happen to the human who dared to love a Beast or one marked by it. When the hunters would come, John and Ronnie would be prey. Those beautiful human children that she had come to love as her own, would be in danger. All in some vain attempt to murder the innocent little pup in her belly. She hung her head with a rush of shame, tugging ruthlessly on the long red hair that had gotten her nicknamed so many things over the years, most ironically _Little Red_ more than once, notably by the sleeping couple beside her.

She bent, long hair obscuring her face for a moment, as her lips brushed his, then hers, one last time.

 _"Forgive me my trespasses.”_ She whispered into the space between them. Just a warm exhale lost to the ravages of the night. Just like the humanity her mother had once tried to instill within her through a mere mortal’s existence. Ginny had knowingly and viciously broken the promise that she’d made to her father years before. Yet as she cradled the new precious life growing inside her, she couldn’t bring herself to regret it.

Even as she gave her fragile life for his, the tiny snaggletoothed pup blinking up at her with those inexplicable silver eyes.

He snapped her spine, shattered her pelvis, and cracked so many of her ribs. He rendered her a hollow husk of a living corpse, barely breathing, and then ate himself out of her womb, the others were born dead, but her wolf pup lived. She was so frail, so delicate, so mortal. Her pup was not. But she still loved him so, it was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make.

 _“You have no business having those eyes…”_ She would gasp into the night air, blood pooling around her broken form, breathing out her final words. _“Silver always means death.”_

  
John never read her letter, after he realized what had happened, that she was _gone,_ he had placed it in he and Ronnie’s battered home safe, buried under the rest of the Queen paraphernalia, but had never opened it. Ronnie didn’t know.

He couldn’t bring himself to embrace the finality of the thing. That Ginny, their Little Red, would never return to their arms again.

If he left it alone, he could still pretend and so could Ronnie.

Neither of them had ever stopped watching the door, waiting for those freckled cheeks and red curls to flounce in and laugh. Apologizing for being gone for so long, but still snuggling into the space between them, where she had carved out her place. 

  
“ _…Now you understand, the two halves of my heart, why I had to leave you both._

_Our baby will be born a Beast and staying would have compromised both your safety and his. I couldn’t gamble with such a hand, my loves._

_I couldn’t choose._

_Perhaps I'll name our baby after you both._

_John… Jacob… Joseph, for a boy._

_Ronnie… Verna… Vera for a girl._

_You will always be the two truest loves of my life, and one day you’ll know our son.”_

  
-X-

  
_"For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these:_

_' **It might have been.'"**_

-John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 


	4. Will Become A Wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this sucks, but eh! I had fun :D
> 
> The Marie-Jeanne quote is from this awesome blog! 
> 
> http://extraordinarybeasts.blogspot.com/2015/08/marie-jeanne-valet-maid-of-gevaudan.html

_What are little boys made of?_

_"Snips and snails, and puppy dogs tails_  
_That's what little boys are made of!"_

 

  
Joe used a red plastic curly straw, the kind usually sold with novelty drinks, to poke at the dead cat oozing blood all over their marble countertop. 

"So... how do I _eat_ this?"  _Without making a mess._

An unhelpful Rami peered at the limp bundle of what was once gingery red fur and a pissy attitude. "No idea, you're the werewolf. Go at it." The scowl and raised eyebrow were pretty accurate in portraying exactly what Joe thought about that order. "Hey! You’re the one who brought it home and there is _no way that thing_ is ever going in the fridge with the normal food." The werewolf rolled his eyes and descended without further preamble, teeth growing long and sharp past his lips and burying deep into a little thatch of caked fur just below where the bloodied pink collar rested. The feline’s meat was gamey, thick and overpowering with salt as it filled his mouth and squirreled out his cheeks. The smaller man lifted his head in a silent threat, lips pursed and poised to spew, silver eyes locking dead-set with his ex-boyfriend’s own docile blue.

Rami’s eyes widened. 

"Joe? No, no, no… _Joseph Francis Lupercalia Mazzello-Valet!_ I swear to God if you _spit that on me..."_  

But all the hysterics were for naught. As a single noisy gulp had the bloody flesh disappearing down the redhead's eager gullet and a scarlet-stained smile growing replete on his full lips. "God _Ram-Ram!_ Of course I wouldn't. Didn't you know that spitters are quitters?" 

A disbelieving snort. "Shut up and eat your cat." 

"With pleasure." The little shit latched on to the sanguine carcass once more, messy as all hell.

And a grinning Joe could see the way Rami’s inner cleanliness demon was screaming at the sight of spilt blood on the tile.

It was even worse when Joe planted a chaste kiss on Rami’s lips and he could taste the corpse. The werewolf nearly pissed himself laughing as the Egyptian actor used the hose on their sink to clean out his mouth with murder alight in his eyes.

“You’re going to _drown yourself!”_

“I can still _taste it!"_

  
-X-

  
Joe honestly contemplated shoving the picture, _(always creased and resting in his wallet now, a way to connect with the young woman he never knew)_ at John and running for the hills.

He had considered countless scenarios of what could happen, but the man being wholly uninterested in the whole conversation had not been one of them. It was like the older man could barely _look_ at the thirty-five-year-old for more than a minute at a time. Just about every time John happened to glance Joe’s way, those inquisitive eyes flicked away again, darting around like the eyes of a rabbit with the weak gaze of a piece of prey.

“ _John?_ Are you _listening?”_

The old man’s eyes flickered with something. “Sorry Joseph, what were you saying?”

The redhead grunted with a small nod, “It’s just Joe.” His voice was suddenly so quiet, so small. “You actually knew my mother, I found this picture…” Trying to explain felt like fighting his way through quicksand, swimming through syrupy molasses.

“Oi! _Deaky!”_ Roger called out to his sire, waving them both over. They had lingered behind the rest of the herd to talk, and everyone was left waiting in front of the busy diner for the rest of their motley crew. “Hurry up, you old codger!”

Joe barely had a moment to collect himself, before John was bounding ahead with a speed not often attributed to men his age. Spurned on by the calls of Joe’s cast-mates and the band members who’d been teasing John in the same way for decades.

The young werewolf felt as though he were being strangled by the noose that hung around his neck and dragged along the ground. “Wait, John! _I—!”_

But the old man was already several paces ahead and didn’t look back.

  
-X-

  
Ginny Mazzello-Valet, redheaded and with an occasionally furry curse in her bloodline, found one of her best-friends standing on the balcony of their shitty hotel room and gazing apathetically down at the busy streets below. 

He was outside the protective fencing of the rails, face pitched towards the sky, scuffed heels grazing the edge and toes suspended in mid-air. It looked like the scene from Titanic, you know the one, only there was no Leonardo DiCaprio holding her astronomer’s waist. Just the man's own sweat-slick palms clutching at the old iron-wrought railing. Standing at the precipice of the unknown, of falling, of dying. 

The sound that tore out of the distressed young woman’s throat was purely animalistic, feral, so not exactly _unheard of_ when coming from a _Valet_ , and within seconds was there, _(had she been as wolf as her son would be born, the creature would have been there. Digging too-sharp nails into those softened sides, and throwing both of them backwards, heedless of just how much power that was put behind the effort)._ But despite her pedigree or lack there of, adrenaline was still on her side. Which was probably why they slammed into the glass doors as hard as they did. The glass doors at least ten or so feet away. She bore the brunt of the blow, Brian landing cushioned against her chest. The young woman’s fingers still held fast, even after the unorthodox landing, panting hard into the still air of the night.

For a moment, she wished to be a wolf.

Jutting broken cheekbones, teeth far too sharp and misshapen to sit comfortably inside her mouth, ordinary green eyes turned silver-gold, pupil-less and crackling with eye-shine. Her ears raised, jagged and pointed, her nose flattened, wrinkled, her tied-up firetruck red curls darkened to the deep scarlet shade of spilt blood. 

She was breathing hard, gently and mindfully unhooking her fingers from Brian’s shirt.

_"What in the hell were you doing!?"_

It was more of a deadly growl than an exclamation, her human green eyes were on fire. 

He let out all the air in his lungs like a flattened Whoopee cushion and was quick with the false explanations. “I wasn’t going to jump! I was _just…_ ” But his voice broke and he buried his face in her neck, sobbing. The early 80s was a bad time for the band.

And a particularly bad time for the lovely man in her arms.

“It’s going to be okay, Brimi. I’ve got you, it’ll all be okay.”

She whispered into the downy soft curls that flourished at his hairline.

“I’ve always got you. I'm always going to be here... Please just come to me.”

_Come to me._

  
-X-

  
Joe ate his feelings.

Well, the Wolf inside him ate his feelings. But the redhead helped.

Three raw hamburgers sat in front of him, and he occupied himself by cramming them down his throat absentmindedly, forgetting that most people couldn’t down three 8 ounce burgers without stopping and still be starving, the meat running bloody and so chunky raw that they could have still been walking around minutes before. He was more than used to eating with just Rami, who didn’t look twice at his culinary choices after seeing a stressed Joe slaughter a mountain lion and gulp it all down in one go.

In fact, the Egyptian man even didn’t bat an eye anymore and simply snagged the pickles off Joe’s plate to nurse on.  
  
Their dinner companions just _stared._

 _“Bloody hell…”_ The werewolf’s ears pricked up at the sound of Ben’s whisper. Which was apt, as poor vegetarian Brian looked as though he were about to be sick. Even Freddie was unable to hide his grimace.

“Joe? Can I see it?”

Joe swallowed another bite before he turned to John again, sensing the lull in conversation. The older man was pointedly _not looking_ at him again.

 _“Wha—?”_ The redhead grunted around a mouthful of sweet tea.

“The _picture,_ the one you were talking about earlier? I’d like to see it.”

Joe didn’t know about the girl who had found the two loves of her life in London more than three decades earlier. He didn’t know about the girl who was Brian’s confidante, the way they would stay up together and look at the stars. The girl who had been Roger’s first drumming student, the one who bandaged his hands with a sigh every time he destroyed them, who was happiest with her torso sticking out of the top of a car, feeling the wind in her hair and her heart buoyed by joy. The girl who had helped Freddie nurse a batch of premature kittens, after smuggling them home in her too-big shirt. She had been on her hands and knees on the hardwood floor, telling Freddie all the secrets in her heart, just as he had once revealed his own. Well, _almost_ every secret.

But Joe didn’t know any of that.

He didn’t know _her._

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea? I mean, we can always do it later… You might not even have known my Mom all that well…”

His voice wavered, as he tugged it free from his wallet.

Then John smiled at him for the first time in that mili-second, and it felt like the redhead had been punched in the stomach.

Roger Taylor snatched the picture clean out of his hand.

_Shit._

The blonde drummer’s eyes widened behind the prescription sunglasses and he even took them off with a trembling liver-spotted hand, just to get a closer look.

“Are you saying… _Little Red_ ’s your Mum?”

His voice sounded even more raw than the hamburgers on Joe’s plate ( _and he’d half-expected one to moo at him a minute ago)_ , it was shaking and breathy, like someone had just trod on his most vulnerable parts. _Little Red?_

“No fucking way…”

It took Joe ages to realize there were tears in the drummer’s eyes.

  
-X-

  
He gave a presentation on Marie-Jeanne and the Beast once, when he was still in High-School.

_“Two hundred fifty years ago today, in the mid- to late morning of August 11, 1765, a young woman named Marie-Jeanne Valet, 19 or 20 years old, and her sister Thérèse, 16 or 17, were attacked by the Beast._

_Marie-Jeanne was a servant of the curate, or clergyman, of the parish of Paulhac. She and Thérèse were crossing the river Desges on their way to the community’s tithe farm. When the Beast, lurking in the underbrush along the river banks, spotted the girls, and flung itself at Marie-Jeanne._

_Luckily, the sensible young woman had brought along a silver-bladed spear, “a pole with a blade, about six inches long and an inch wide, at the end of it,” per Beast chronicler Abbé Pierre Pourcher._

_She used it._

_Marie-Jeanne Valet impaled the Beast with her weapon, actually pushing it over, all the while shouting for help, along with her sister. Later, when questioned by authorities, the girls described the Beast as being the size of a large farm dog. It was gray with a white chest and black back, they said. Its front was bigger than its rear. It had a big flat head and big teeth._

_The authorities examined Marie-Jeanne’s spear and noted that the shaft of the weapon was coated in two to three inches of blood. The intrepid Marie-Jeanne was an “Amazon,” according to the press. Royal gunbearer François Antoine, impressed with her bravery and composure, called her as a second Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans._

_The girls, meanwhile, being uneducated, could not sign the statements documenting their experience.”_

He dropped his hand from where it had been fiddling with the black iron pentagram around his neck, near identical to _The Mark Of The Beast_ glowing on his palm. The usually cold steel felt warm against the calloused pads of his fingers.

The boy cocked an eyebrow towards his teacher at the back of the class. 

"Can I sit down now, sir?" 

Mr. Franklin seemed to startle back into reality at the sound of his soft question. 

"Oh! Yes, yes, excellent presentation Mr. Mazzello-Valet as usual. I'm looking forward to your next performance in our newest school production, hm?" He forced a smile at the old man's gentle prodding. “Mr… John Quincy? You're next, son." 

Joe just slumped back into his graffitied seat by the window, with a soft sigh, rubbing at his temples and trying his best to stave off the incoming headache. It didn't help the situation. Only the familiar crinkling sounds of a pack of Oreos being opened and a bright orange creme filling did that. 

Sweet Sally with her coke-bottle thick reading glasses and multicolored braces, grinned at the sudden bright look on her best-friend’s face, as the redhead practically inhaled all six Halloween Oreos.

Which Joe was pretty sure that his backspot had bought off _EBay,_ since it was _March_ after all. 

"Are you okay?" 

Their desks were already as pushed together as humanly possible and Joe really didn't give a flying fuck about other people or what they thought about the ‘fag-and-hag clubhouse’ by the window. It was reassuring and he could already feel the headache ebbing away like the tide, he may not have been able to see Sal's lips move, his eyes trying to focus on John Quincy up at the board, but he could still feel the solid weight of that familiar hand in his, hear her steady breathing. "Yes." 

"She was basically your _wolf mother_. It's okay to be freaked out." Her voice was scarcely above a murmur, but Joe still stiffened like a board and drew his hand away with a venomous hiss. He’d told her. Of course he’d told her. She was his best-friend.

"She died _three hundred years ago_ , she was not my mother. _Ginny Mazzello-Valet_ was my mother." 

Sally just rolled her eyes and snatched Joe's hand back up again. He didn't pull away this time. What was the point in lying, in pretending, when they both knew the truth?

Then a crumpled piece of notebook paper was tossed flippantly onto his desk by some asshole kid named Drew, once John Quincy was on his clumsy way back to his seat after his presentation on the _Salem Witch Trials and Martha Carrier._ Andrew Comanski was the biggest dick this side of the Potomac and everybody knew it, Joe especially. He flipped open the note apathetically, knowing full well that it would only be a variation on the unoriginal  _Fag, Freak or Witch._ His usual nicknames. His tormentors weren't exactly creative. 

_Was she your Real Mom, Toasty?_

Complete with a crudely drawn picture of he himself hanging from the gallows with a noose around his neck. And a little note and arrow beside it: _"Like mother like son"._

_Joy._

Well, at least he wasn't on fire in this one. Sure he got called " _Toasty_ " but him being burned at the stake wasn't outright mentioned in the jeer, a rare occurrence. 

Sally's pretty dark eyes widened when she saw it. But Joe already knew the answer to her question, long before she could pose it with a practiced sort of ease. "He doesn't know, Mustang Sally. He's just a prick." 

The young werewolf shoved the note inside the hidden pocket of his coffin-themed backpack. Along with all the rest of that week's love letters. Not really giving a single fuck.

It just happened so often that now, well, what would be the point in getting mad? He'd still have _Carrie_ scrawled on his locker in sharpie between periods. He'd still be  _Freak_ as he got crushed against the wall. _Fag_ as he ended up upside down in a dumpster. And  _Witch_ during dodgeball or just about any kind of outside activity that wasn’t cheer. 

Ah yes, it was always a lovely day of reckoning when _Burn the Witch, Burn the Witch, Burn the Witch_ caught back on. A crowd favorite. 

The familiar chant was almost like his catchphrase by this point. Something that the other kids would whisper under their breaths when he was around to hear it and then to yell loudly once his back was turned, as if his ears were attached to his boobs and he totally wasn't listening if he was pointed in another direction. Yeah. Right. 

The bell rang loud enough to shake the fillings in his mouth and make the Wolf inside him cry out, but Joe lovingly took up Sally's hand with his own, unashamed as they walked out of class together. The warmth from his best-friend was well worth the stares.

So it was fair to say that he was distracted, when Drew came up behind him and all but body-checked his face into the door jamb. 

Everything went white-hot and icy-cold for a minute, his right eye burned something terrible. And he had to bite down on his tongue just to center himself, he could still feel the ice of instinctive change in his fingertips like static from a carpet or nails on a chalkboard, the unquenchable thirst to change, to fight. He couldn't let it go, he had to push it back down. _Down, down, down, down… Don’t change, don’t change…_

"Joe! _Joey!_ Come on look at me! _Princey! Joseph Mazzello-Valet_ , look at me!" 

His head snapped up, complete with watery eyes and a quick twist of a human smile. His hands were cupped around his bad side that was still stinging something fierce and oh God it _hurt._

But luckily he could still see well enough out of his good eye to prevent Sally from jumping on Drew, who was standing there grinning. 

"Who the fuck do you think you are?! _How dare you!"_ She yowled, like a cat's whose tail had just been trod on, tearing off her glasses and getting ready to dole out a beating. ”Come here asshole, I'll tear you a new one!" Her screaming of obscenities even managed to drown out Drew's piss-poor excuses to Mr. Franklin. _Oh but Mr. Franklin, I tripped. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt him..._

Joe threw out his arms with wolf-speed to catch her around the waist, releasing his aching face. "No, no, no! Sal, he's not worth it, I'm fine. Look at me, you wanted me to look at you right? _I'm fine!"_

His best-friend’s head whipped around, and her expression fell considerably by just looking at him. "Oh Joey, _your face..."_

"That is _enough!"_

Mr. Franklin's booming voice was so loud that just about everyone in the general vicinity startled and stilled where they stood. Man, it was easy enough to forget that the old man was actually a very large and imposing figure, when he really stood up without his gout cane and used the full volume of his voice. Scary as all fuck. Joe even peed a little and he was a creature of the dark, straight out of the mythology that people told horror stories about on Halloween night.  
   
“Ms. Gonzalez, please escort Mr. Mazzello-Valet to the nurse while I accompany Mr. Comanski to the disciplinarians' office. The rest of you, sit quietly and watch this VHS series on the Salem Witch Trials." He already had the damn thing queued up on his shitty fuzzy class TV. "When the bell rings, feel free to go home for the day." It was last period, after all. 

Sally half-carried her best-friend out of that room, not even bothering to listen to Drew's bitching and moaning about his imagined slights. 

_"Sal, it's just my face that's messed up, my legs work just fine."_

_"Uh huh."_

_"You can put me down now..."_

_"Nope."_

_Well okay then._

When they finally reached the school clinic, she set him down lightly, gently as possible, before all but collapsing against the cold metal lockers. Her scarred knuckles grinding into the unbending surface. "Sally?" His voice was small. But Joe's best-friend was far too busy counting softly under her breath in clumsy Spanish and going through all her breathing exercises rather than answering. The girl was trying desperately to control the near uncontrollable rage boiling over within her, the blistering rolling waves of emotion that would splash out like water from an overtaxed basin at the slightest err in provocation. 

_Only... not with Joe, never with Joe._

He was like the kryptonite to Sally's breathtaking anger-management issues. 

_(Sometimes he wished that he felt the same way for Sally that she felt for him)._

The werewolf had no qualms about walking over and wrapping his chubby arms around his best-friend, pressing his uninjured cheek to his friend’s back in the same way Sally was practically making out with the lockers in front of them. 

"It's okay, Mustang Sally. I've got you."

The staccato beat of another heart against her back was her anchor. Joe held Sally until she could hold onto himself again. He knew what it was like to feel so out of control.

When she was finally controlled enough to turn around again, she looked stricken at the sight of her best-friend’s spectacularly bruising face. Joe hadn't seen his reflection yet, but he was banking on it not being a pleasing sight. The whole afflicted area was throbbing and aching, the white hot pain had long since fled, as long as he didn't touch it. He couldn't even open his right eye all the way. _Fuck._

"Why is it turning black so fast...?" 

Sally cursed under her breath as she took hold of her crush's chin and peered at his face. Scrutinizing every inch. Every part that Drew had fucked up. Joe just sighed and batted her hands away. So Sal honest to god, pouted. It was accelerating the healing process, getting darker quickly and then healing itself like in a time warp. She knew that.

Completely ignoring the clinic, Joe flounced off into the gross bathroom around the corner. As Sally followed after him like a nervous mother hen, wringing the hem of her collared uniform blazer. Joe used to get bitched at a lot for violating the school's dress code, given that a rarely wore uniform pants let alone a collared polo, but eventually they just gave up and let him wear his blazer over whatever the fuck he wanted. Maybe because they were just as scared of The Witch as the rest of the students were. Afraid that Joe was going to somehow curse them into oblivion for making him wear khakis. If only they knew about The Wolf.

He took one good luck at his face in the bathroom mirror and winced, which only made his face more sore. 

"Ew." 

And ew was right. It looked hella nasty. 

Black was far too much of a generalization for the bruising that stamped him out as either a victim or a troublemaker. It was mottled in all colors, red and purple and blue, the edges even looked sort of gray from where they stretched across the bridge of his nose and shaded contours around his cheek. It was no wonder he couldn't open that eye, it was so swollen that it was hard to tell where his eye ended and his eyelid began. Ouch. 

Yuck, but the edges had begun to yellow, so it would certainly be healed soon enough, it was just a waiting game.

“He really did a number on you, _Puppy.”_ She whispered as she used paper-towels to blot at the worst of it.

“Don’t call me that.”

Her only answer was a kiss on his bruised cheek, which made him feel a whole lot better than any werewolf healing ever could.

  
-X-

  
In Joe’s nightmares, the ones that weren’t about the hunters, he was a _young man._

A young man carrying a new set of wedding bands.

  
Bought for the simple joy of seeing the awestruck look on that beautiful face. He couldn't wait to see those newly bought golden bands shining from their clasped hands, two hearts tied together by love, forever. That was why he'd had them engraved, you know. 

On his own, it read: _"Doubt that the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move his aides..."_

And on Rami's: ". _..Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love."_

It was a quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Sally had introduced the literary genius of his writing to him during sophomore year for the play they were in. It was so very enlightening. But that quote had always stuck with him. Probably because he had never truly understood it's meaning. Not until he had realized just how deeply his feelings for Rami went, just how madly in love he was with his best-friend.

That was the moment that the quote finally clicked into place. 

_You can always doubt things that are proven to be fact, like the burning of stars and the movement of planets in the universe. You can doubt words that are proclaimed to be truth, you can always rebuke them as lies. But the idea of love, something that should be as intangible and as fleeting as air, as intangible as the idea of a God or higher power, is somehow unquestionable. It defies all logic and yet it's a promise. His devoted promise to Rami. One that he used to murmur into those soft obsidian locks every night and that he sometimes still did._

_You can question the very fabric of reality. You can question words, tear them apart till they're meaningless syllables._

_But never doubt, that I will love you._

_Even when all of this has faded to nothingness._

_I will love you until I no longer comprehend myself._

  
Joe would sit the box at the foot of Rami’s grave.

Seventy-two long years together and Joe was a _young man._

  
-X-

  
" _No. No, I'm not leaving. Just listen to me! Uh..._

_Once upon a time, long ago, there was a little girl. A... A little girl who was different... Who was different from the other people in her village. She could see and... and do things that no one could understand! And that made them scared of her! She turned away from everyone and became sad and lonely, and had no one to turn to!_

_The more she turned away from people, the more scared they were of her. And they did something terrible!_

_They became so scared that they took her away and they killed her!_

_And even... and even though she was dead, something in her came back! And this part of her, wouldn't go away not even after three hundred years!_

_And the longer it stayed, the less there was of the little girl."_

  
_-_ Paranorman, Laika

 


	5. Whoever Is Bitten By A Werewolf And Lives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody is perfect. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Features "The Law of The Jungle" by Rudyard Kipling and "I Know I'm A Wolf" by The Young Heretics. :)

 

 _“Dear rabbit, my legs are getting weak chasing you_  
_The snow fields wouldn't seem so big if you knew_  
_That this blood on my teeth it is far beyond dry_  
_And I've captured you once but I wasn't quite right_

_So I'm telling you that you'll be safe with me.”_

  
“Goodness, between the two of you, Deaky’ll soon run out of space to put all the little imps.”

Freddie was joking, bouncing a chubby blonde Deacon baby on his knee. Little Laura squealing along with the motion, wearing her gummy smile, blonde pigtails flopping all over the place. The picture of bliss.

The overgrown boys had laughed, chuffed by the cute little girl’s antics and Fred being well… _Fred._

Yet Ginny was mirthless and almost sullen, as she sighed and cuddled the tiny boy in her arms ever closer. _“Too tight, Maman!”_ Mikey whined, kicking his little legs against her own, but her once vibrant eyes had turned still and glassy.

She was too busy remembering the promise she had made to her aging father so long ago, remembering the flash of his pumpkin-colored eyes. The animal within him fighting to be released.

Those _eyes._

The blood in her veins started to congeal and coagulate, turned icy as she imagined those eyes looking back at her from a newborn’s face.

She swallowed down her grief, the fear that grasped at her heart, squeezing tight.

“I can’t actually. That’s Ronnie’s department, not mine.” Looking pointedly at yet another little bump growing under her darling’s sundress.

The summer sunshine tickled her face like butterfly kisses and there was a little hand fisted in her red hair. She allowed herself to relax, to let her muscles uncurl to stop imagining a dead child. A cursed child and to instead, focus on the living right in front of her.

“Can’t what?” Roger set down his beer, dappled with condensation, onto the picnic table that she had recently painted a pretty sky-blue, it was bound to leave a watermark. He leaned forwards slightly, totally focused on her, concern in those delicate blue eyes, framed with the lashes of a doll.

In fact, all of them were staring.

Her beloved John and Ronnie in particular, she felt Deaky duck his head and press a kiss to the crown of her head, coaxing her to go on. Her precious Ronnie reached over to wrap her milksoft little hand around Ginny’s.

“Have children. Or, well, _bear children_ I should say. It wouldn’t be fair to give them the family curse.” She laughed herself then, in a way that sounded frightfully brittle, even to herself.

But she didn’t mean for it to be.

Maybe she was more bitter than she allowed herself to let on.

Those glowing orange eyes that haunted her every dream, condemning her, for the sometimes wish to be like her father and Rency. To be more than just human.

“Family curse?” Brian looked positively ill at the connotations of that phrase.

She should have told him before, during one of their usual cuddling sessions, the ones where they huddled together under several heavy duvets, to look up at the stars on the back of their eyes if not in the sky and try to forget the woes of their world. Perfection was not something to strive towards. It was far too boring and she often told him so.

“There’s a genetic illness in my family and I’m a carrier for it. So there’s a high likelihood of me having an afflicted child. And I won’t do that. I won’t… I won’t bear a child who will only know suffering and pain.” She swallowed pointedly and brushed a few errant tears from her eyes. “It would be selfish…” The young redhead trailed off, but forcibly injected cheerfulness into her tone.

“Besides, I have all the family I need with you lot.” Reaching over to give Rog a playful shove. Trying to wash the concern away from his eyes. “I’ve got Ronnie, Deaky and a house full of babies… What else could I possibly need?”

_What else could she possibly need?_

She believed it with all her heart.

The eyes watched her still.

  
-X-

  
_“Oh rabbit, my claws are dull now so don't be afraid_  
_I could keep you warm as long as you can just try to be brave.”_

  
-X-

  
“What?”

It looked like all the color had been bleached from Brian’s face and he snatched that old creased picture from Roger’s hand as fast as Joe could have with his inhuman speed.

That wrinkled picture made its rounds around the table at what seemed like the speed of light. The werewolf was frozen where he sat, still as death, barely breathing with eyes stretched unbelievably wide. The only person grounding him was Rami, who was still shaking his shoulder lightly, trying to speak to him. To call him back to their mortal plane. But Joe couldn’t hear anything over all the radio static in his head.

They all knew her.

They all _knew_ … His chest clenched tightly, The Wolf inside him howled.

Did _they know?_

Did _he know?_

… _What did John know?_

Joe felt his fingers lengthen unconsciously, his claws pushing into the table as smoothly as if he were holding onto cottage cheese instead of cold steel. Bending it like taffy beneath his grip. Rami was clutching onto his arm for all he was worth, clinging to him like a stamp. “ _Joey, calm down. It’s alright, Joe. You’re going to be alright.”_ Whispering under his breath at a decibel-level that only Joe could hear.

“I took this picture. I think I still have a stereo set of them.” Brian whispered, almost reverently as he rubbed his thumb over the frayed edges, having dragged a pair of bifocals from his breast-pocket to get a closer look. Freddie was peering over his shoulder, the idea of personal space being a forgone concept to these pensioners.

“Dear, that’s impossible.” He shook that head of salt and pepper hair with lips pulled into a tight grimace. As if attempting to hide from the world, resting a cheek against Brian’s shoulder.

“She _couldn’t_ have children, remember?”

His eyes flitting around for the confirmation, searching the eyes of his bandmates for reassurance.

“No.” John whispered, the first time he’d spoken since the picture had begun its rounds. If he was regretting forcing Joe’s hand, then he didn’t reveal it through his facial features. Yet it seemed as though he didn’t reveal a lot through them anyway. “She said she _shouldn’t_ have children.”

Joe closed his eyes and saw the mother that he never knew, the mother in that picture.

Pressing kisses to the halo of damp red hair on his head.

The same red as the blood that pooled around them. Her only living child.

His tiny cries had pierced the night to herald her last breaths.

“How old are you?”

John’s eyes were hard as he regaled Joe, his gaze so sharp that the werewolf resisted the urge to tuck his tail between his legs and submit, his knees digging into the rough tile of the shitty diner that they’d found themselves in. Instead, he just bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, deep enough to taste the sour coppery tang of blood. His red lashes barely covering those silver eyes.

“Joseph, how old are you?”

A demand, using his full name and everything. Yet John’s voice only grew colder.

Joe ached to feel the familiar burn of his grandfather’s silver bullet pendant around his neck, something to ground him, something to hurt the outside as much as the in.

_Now this is the law of the jungle, as old and as true as the sky…_

John was looking at him like he was something disgusting, a memory of another life, proof of an old war wound, one being torn open once more. Little did Joe know, that the old man was actually imagining a girl in his place, with red hair falling out of her messy bun and bright eyes.

_And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die._

Joe heard his father stand up from the sticky table, arms crossed to hide the way that they trembled like leaves in the wind. Freddie was trying to coax him back down again, to calm himself, like poor Rami was desperately trying to do to him.

_As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the law runneth forward and back;_

John was backing up, wanting to close his eyes and block out the world, but he couldn’t look away from Joe. Away from Ginny, who batted her sultry green eyes at him from the redhead’s seat. _‘Can I order us a milkshake, Deaky dear? They have green dyed shakes for St. Patrick’s Day!’_ He could see her giggling in his mind’s eye as if he’d only spoken to her yesterday. Haunted by the ghost of a life he’d once adored.

_For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack._

“You can’t really be her son.” Roger was saying, shaking his head, those piercing blue eyes as stuck on Joe as John’s were. “She wouldn’t have had children, no fucking way. Besides the only people she was ever with were Ronnie and Deaky! Unless… she found someone else?”

_Wash daily from nose tip to tail tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;_

Joe’s breaths were coming out in short little pants, hot and acrid on his tongue, he shivered and resisted the near-unconquerable urge to vomit. The food sitting like a stone in his belly. A genuine belly full of rocks. He remembered that story from his childhood. Little Red Riding Hood, _The Big Bad Wolf_ ’s belly sewn full of rocks and dumped into a river to drown. Because surely if you’re going to have a monster in your story… it would make sense to have a wolf.

 _And remember the night is for hunting and forget not the day is for sleep._  
  
Freddie searched his face, his dark and lined eyes turned melancholic and sad. “I didn’t think it was true.” Joe thought of the looks the old man had been giving him earlier in the day and bit down hard on his tongue, silver eyes downcast. “I didn’t really think… You look so much like John.”

_The jackal may follow the tiger, but, cub, when thy whiskers are grown,_

That seemed to freeze the merry band of Queens where they sat and compel them all to look at him again, staring ever harder and he fought the urge to be sick.

“Joe, how old are you?”

_Remember the wolf is a hunter—go forth and get food of thy own._

All he could hear was white noise.

“Joey,” Rami was looking at him with such sadness in his gaze and a fair bit of worry. Feathers of dark hair falling onto his forehead in messy wisps. “ _Breathe, habibi.”_

Reaching out to touch Joe’s cheek.

The Wolf inside him roared.

_When pack meets with pack in the jungle, and neither will go from the trail,_

A feral growl tore out of his throat before he could stifle it and his eyes shifted from their usual innocent molten silver to a sickening golden-orange shade, locking gazes with Rami in all their true glory. Realizing what he’d done only seconds later, when horror was plain on the older man’s eyes. Shit. Fuck. Oh God no. He’d nearly…

 _Lie down till the leaders have spoken; it may be fair words shall prevail._  
  
“Shit, Rami, I didn’t mean…” He felt his returned human eyes welled up with tears and Rami’s frantic arms that tried to grab him into a hug, but he was already on his feet and backing away, hands in front of him. Trying to protect his best-friend, his mate, his father, from _himself._

“Joey!”

_When ye fight with a wolf of the pack ye must fight him alone and afar,_

“I’m so sorry.”

He ran.

_Lest others take part in the quarrel and the pack is diminished by war._

Rami was up from his seat in an instant, wheeling around to regard the men before them with a sneer. “He’s thirty-five, you self-righteous assholes.” The Egyptian man was almost never angry but he was instantly incensed, his mind replaying with the sound of his ex-boyfriend and best-friend’s footfalls as he had bolted out. Then with eyes only for John, he growled in his very human voice. “His dead mother’s about two months pregnant in that photo you’re holding, since you were so fucking curious.” He was scary when he got angry, far scarier than his boyfriend and he knew it.

Then he dropped everything and ran after the boy he still loved, with everything he had.

Leaving them alone at the table and for Ben to be the one to finally ask.

“What the fuck just happened?”

Gwilym was too busy staring at the table, the imprints left behind where Joe had been gripping it, they looked almost like they’d sunk into the steel a half inch, with a couple bits pressed even deeper. If Gwil hadn’t known any better, he would have called them _claws_.

  
-X-

  
“ _Yes I know I'm a wolf and I've been known to bite_  
_But the rest of my pack, I have left them behind…”_

  
-X-

  
Rency was baking when he got the call. 

Clad in a frilly yet impractical apron, with dried pink funfetti frosting carving a deep swath through his dyed thatch of hair and a trusty wooden spoon gripped tightly in one hand. The one that wasn't dripping with spilled batter that is.

Gorgeous, really. The epitome of XXXX Confectioner's sugar.

To make a long story short, Lawrence Mazzello-Valet was a hot fucking mess.

And yet... a hot fucking mess who could make a mean éclair, whip up a batch of berry tarts out of nothing, fresh apple turnover at a moment's notice or a strawberry/chocolate drizzled cheesecake that even satisfied his secretly picky boyfriend. The only upsides to being a baker by trade. 

However, the call he'd just taken while dripping in frosting and batter, had been from a local café that he'd never attended before. With a bright young lady on the other end informing him, in the politest way possible, that his boyfriend needed immediate collection from their premises.  

It was disappointing, but not hard for Ren to read in-between the lines, that his Tally, his boyfriend of three long scarlet-berry years, was likely so drunk that a cognizant functional spouse had to be called-in to scrape him off the floor and tote him home. He sighed, it wouldn't exactly be the first time such an event had transpired. Tally's copious alcohol consumption had been a contention point between them for many years. But so was Rency's hereditary moonlit madness for that matter. 

Tally claimed to love him despite it all.

So how could he deprive his lover of the same common courtesy? 

_"It'll make you sick." He had whispered one night, into those beautiful curls framing a face that so many had unfairly called undesirable. Rency had never shared the sentiment, he had never loved another._

_"Maybe, but then you'll just change me. Then it'll all be fixed." A sleepy declaration that should've amounted to nothing, and yet implied so much more._

_"No, never, I can't." He'd wept, long after Tally had been taken over by restful slumber. He wouldn't ever. He couldn't. "You're too perfect, I won't make you a monster." His own small fingers had twirled over the beginnings of stubble on Talbot’s face._

_"I'd rather eat a silver bullet and follow you."_

He'd been making a smash-cake for the nice elderly couple that lived a few doors down from them, their little granddaughter's first birthday was the next day and they'd wanted a dessert that the sweet child could actually enjoy. Ergo, a smash-cake was perfect.

The confectionary was also one of his specialties, a small basic vanilla cake with a whipped cream frosting that he'd dye a menagerie of colors and style in the buyer's choosing. For little Emma, he'd created a violent pink shade of whipped cream frosting and shaped it over the dessert until the final result resembled the bottom half of a ruffled princess dress. The big sparkly number-one candle he'd included would make a lovely topper. 

It was unlikely that she'd ever remember the day, or the feeling of her little hands squishing and playing with her first ever birthday cake. But her family would, that was enough for him. 

He left it to set on the countertop before rushing off to get Tally, and made a mental note to take it over to their neighbors' place in the morning.

Free of charge of course, the whole thing was. 

It didn't exactly take a genius to understand the dire financial straits that most of their neighbors were in. One didn't live in a building like theirs unless there were no other options available to you. But that was no reason for a child not to have a lovely first birthday.

He'd send over a little wrapped parcel as well. It was the least he could do. 

For unlike most, they didn't live in the building due to money woes. Theirs was another problem entire.

A furry little problem that had afflicted Ren since his unholy birth years prior, something they had both grown to live with.

Well, one of them. 

 _Things they had learned to cope with together over the past five years together:_ Tally's drinking like a fish and Ren's propensity for growing a tail. 

Then the phone rang once more, and he sighed, setting aside his apron and picking up the phone, ready to bitch at the girl at the bar for calling him yet again. Yes, he was on his way.

“Hello?”

“Is this Lawrence Valet?”

He froze, hearing the thin vein of ice in the tone.

“Yes?”

 _Things they would have to learn to cope with after five long years together:_ Raising his orphaned nephew with a propensity for growing a tail.

  
-X-

  
“ _And my teeth may be sharp and I've been raised to kill_  
_But the thought of fresh meat, it is making me ill…”_

 

-X-

  
“Oh God, Rami what have I done?”

The older man was cradling the trembling werewolf against his chest, pressing gentle kisses into his red hairline. Joe’s eyes were shut tightly against the world and his claws dug deeply into Rami’s thick hoodie to ground himself as he panted into the tiny space between them.

“What have I done?” He moaned, berating himself more than any creature ought to.

“It’s all going to be okay, Joey. Just breathe.” Rami cooed and Joe felt his heart shatter into a thousand pieces. Why was the man in his arms so unafraid to hold a monster?

What had he ever done to deserve someone like Rami Said Malek?

“I’m so sorry, Rami.”

 

_There was a reason humans weren’t meant to love wolves or those marked by them._

_Creatures predestined for sorrow all their days._

 

-X-

  
“ _So I'm telling you that you'll be safe with me.”_

  
-X-

 

  
“Oh God, Tally what have I done?”

Talbot was cradling the werewolf against his chest, pressing kisses into his damp hairline. Lawrence’s eyes were shut tightly against the world and his claws dug deeply into Tally’s thick blood-stained hoodie. The blood dripped sluggishly from the wound on his cheek, a gouge packed with enough gauze to slow the majority of the gush that accompanied it. The wound made it hard to smile but the human managed.

Ah, the strength of humans.

“What have I done?” He whimpered, like a kicked puppy. His eyes turned crystalline with unshed tears.

“It’s going to be okay, Rency. Just breathe with me.” Tally had slurred around the pain and stiffening of his cheek, the way the wound pulled, and Ren felt his heart shatter into a thousand pieces. Why was the man in his arms so unafraid to hold a monster?

What had he ever done to deserve someone like Talbot Chevalier?

“I’m so sorry, Tally.”

  
_There was a reason humans weren’t meant to love wolves or those marked by them._

_Creatures predestined for sorrow all their days._

  
-X-

  
_“So rabbit please stop looking the other way…”_

  
-X-

  
John was on his hands and knees, digging frantically through filing cabinets, through boxes piled high with old receipts and tour paperwork, sifting through endless memorabilia from 1983.

He needed to find that letter.

The one he had never opened.

The one he’d never read.

Because all at once, he knew what must be hidden in its depths.

_I’m pregnant…_

_Didn’t want to burden the both of you with an ill child…_  
  
_Thought it better to leave you…_

_…Forgive me?_

His heart was throbbing and he even worried for a moment that all the stress and smoking had given him a heart attack before his time. ( _Part of him wished for it. The boy playing Freddie had said that she was… That his beautiful Ginny was…)._ His mind was full of youthful images, swirling around and around fast enough to make him sick, yellowed and frayed with time like that picture the boy had forgotten, the picture that Freddie had taken home with him. Home to cry undoubtedly, with Jim holding him close. His own arms were empty. _How was he supposed to tell Ronnie?_

In his mind, Ginny had never aged past the guise of a girl with free-flowing red hair and a wild thing smile.

Something had always been so otherworldly about Ginny. _His Little Red._

She had been half-composed of the wilds and mountain rain.

Perhaps that was why looking at Joseph had hurt him so much. Even before the connection was made between them, the boy was still the same as his mother. The smell of wind and mountain rain imbued within him like a natural perfume.

They had all gushed to him before he’d arrived, that the boy playing him looked like his younger self’s twin. But how could they say that? The boy had his face shape, yes that was true, he would concede it. But that man was Ginny’s child in every ounce, from the shape of his cupid’s bow mouth to the color of his hair and the aura she had always carried around herself like a blanket. He was _her son._

But, if the date was right… If the man was truly thirty-five…

He felt his heart clench in his chest.

The baby was why she left, it had to be.

He needed to find that letter, he needed to know.

But, he also did not.

He didn’t know if he could bear to see that she had cried for them. That she had wanted them to go after her. That she had wanted them to know their son. Because that is what Ginny would have called her child. Not just hers, but his and Ronnie’s as well. Biological or not, the baby would have two mothers in her mind, and a father.

John was the boy’s father.

What… What if she had spent the rest of her life waiting for him?

The grief hit then, like a tidal wave. Dragging him under and swallowing him whole, ripping the air free from his lungs and tossing him about like a rag-doll at the mercy of it’s unsurmountable power.

It couldn’t be true, it couldn’t be. _She was…_

Ginny was sitting on his bed, laughing so hard she snorted and fell back, her hair spilling off the sides as she stared up at the ceiling. Her eyes like St. Elmo’s Fire when they finally caught his.

Ginny was outside watching the snow fall with a childlike delighted glow on her face. Trying to catch a snowflake on her tongue and wincing at the taste, waving him over with one pink-gloved hand. The same color as her nose. _“Come warm me up, Deaky!”_ She teased, spinning around and around.

Ginny was leaning against the recording booth, wearing Roger’s rainbow jacket and flaunting herself around in it, pretending to be the blonde. The drummer was aghast at the sight, while everyone else laughed and John could only stare at the little pixie he loved so much.

Ginny was trying to wrap a telescope for Brian’s birthday on the living room carpet, one of those antique ones, gold-plated and likely heavier than she was. The legs seemed to be unwilling to bend. He watched her frustration grow, the little vein in her temple twitching to life and a scowl in a place of crowning glory upon her features. _“Well?”_ She demanded, hands on her hips. _“Are just going to stand there or are you going to help me?”_

Ginny was squished between Freddie’s knees, having her hair cut. _“Just chop it all off, Fred!_ ” She giggled and the frontman had gasped, clutching his metaphorical pearls. He barely chopped off an inch.

Ginny was asleep with her head pillowed on his chest, Ronnie’s hand cupping the the small of her back, to feel it rise and fall as she breathed. His arms were full of both the women he loved more than anything in the world, and he could rest easy because of it.

Then he saw Ginny’s name on a little marble headstone.

Ginny, sleeping six feet underneath the ground.

John covered his mouth with both hands, eyes fluttering closed as he _screamed._

  
-X-

  
_“It's cold out there so why not stay here_

_Under my tail.”_

  
-X-

 


	6. Becomes A Werewolf Himself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Features a Wolfman Quote for a title and Two Worlds by Phil Collins as the quotes. :)
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> As well as a rousing thank you to everyone who wanted to see Jurassic Park with wolfy Joe :)

_“Put your faith in what you most believe in_  
_Two worlds, one family_  
_Trust your heart_  
_Let fate decide_

  
_To guide these lives we see…”_

 

 

Ariana was staring up at the tilted stunt car, and the animatronic T-Rex left more or less abandoned a few paces ahead, her eyes full of wonder.

Little Joe, all of eight years old, was watching the same thing, safely tucked away behind the cameras instead of out in the open.

The movement experts, each of them with a device that controlled only a small portion of the massive mechanical T-Rex, meant to work in tandem to create an idiosyncratic moving creature, had all gone to lunch. Only a few scattered techs remained to dry off the creature.

Later on, he would learn that the animatronic worked off a set of very specific calculations for height and weight and that the rain that fell in buckets during the _T-Rex Paddock Attack_ scene would throw that carefully calibrated weight off and make the T-Rex animatronic shake uncontrollably. He would also learn that the constant drying and soaking of the creature could make the robotics go haywire and allow it to jerk on its own by accident. 

So what happened next, made a lot more sense in hindsight.

Joey being a werewolf meant his instincts were far keener than most, simply by nature.

A bit like a human with a constant adrenaline high, he could process and see everything happening at warp speed with a horrifying level of definition. So he knew the T-Rex’s tail was moving and that it was going to hit the already unbalanced car, _click thud_ , in the seconds before it actually did.

And he was running.

“ _Ariana!_ _Move!”_

He was faster than the grating anguished sounds that tore free from his mouth.

It felt like only a second had passed, before he was at her side, her blue eyes were wide and a scream died in her throat.

Not one of those horror movie screams that he’d heard several times in the previous scenes that they’d shot together. She was genuinely _afraid._

When he wrapped his tiny arms around her waist, she tensed up on reflex, which made things even more difficult and he used one leg to balance all his weight on, as the other kicked out and dragged them both to the ground. Her laying on the asphalt and him on top of her, feet and hands braced on the ground on either side of her to prevent him from putting any undue weight on her, as the car slammed into his back at full-force.

He screamed.

The moment it made contact, his claws shot out of his hands and dug into the crumbling concrete, the same with the claws of his feet that tore open his shoes and dug into the earth for traction. His eyes flashed the frightening orange-yellow of the _Wolf_ and he could feel the way his fangs pushed past his lips, nicking the corner of his mouth. Dripping a few droplets of blood onto poor Ariana, who was still pinned beneath him and could only stare, her eyes as wide as dinner plates and pink mouth open in a silent scream.

He felt horrible for scaring her, but in the spur of the moment, he preferred her being alive and able to hate at him for it than the alternative.

The car made a sickening crunching noise as it hit the pavement and bounced back up again, when it found no give from his back, he was immoveable.

Glass broke around them like a confetti cannon going off too close and there was a horrible popping noise and metallic thud that he couldn’t identify, he was just trying to make sure that Ari was alright.

She hadn’t made a sound in the whole handful of seconds that had just passed, she hadn’t even focused on him.

The whole thing was so jarring for them both.

Then, everything was still.

He blinked.

She blinked.

And the screams began.

Most of them were wordless and were accompanied by the sound of frantic footfalls, a dozen people bolting towards them.

_“Ariana!”_

_“Joey!”_

_“The kids!”_

_“Grab the medics!”_

The rest were just garbled yells, general mammalian sounds of terror.

Sometimes humans weren’t so different from wolves.

But he only had eyes for Ariana.

Who had tears bubbling up in her own, along with tiny panting breaths that made his nose curl. “J-Joey?” She whimpered between her soft little gasps, her bottom lip trembling.

His left foot started to slide backwards, the ground was slick with motor oil and blood, and he had to shift the weight that pressed down on his back as he frantically tried to find his traction once more. Ari screamed at the impromptu movement and each shout ended with a quivering sob. Mouth opened wide and gasping through her tears. She was clearly terrified.

“Shush, shush, Ari it’s _okay.”_ He crooned, his voice creeping far too low and raspy. He sounded feral and his eyes were still glowing, his teeth felt far too big for his mouth. No wonder she was so scared. “I’ve got you. I’ve got us. It’s going to be okay.”

For a moment, it seemed like she believed him.

Then a familiar hand reached under the car and enclosed his thin wrist, giving a sharp tug.

If he’d been human, he probably would have lost his grip and the car would have brutally crushed them both into a pancake, but being who he was, he managed to dig his claws further into the cement with a choked off scream that sounded like it could be a little boy’s… in a horror film.

Poor Ariana whipped around to stare through the crack of light as the hand retreated.

“Stop! No! You can’t grab Joey, he’s the one holding the car up!”

“What?!” Oh, _Jeff._ He would have recognized the dark-haired man’s dulcet tones anywhere, terse as though they were by the situation. “Joey’s holding up _the car?!”_

“Get Ari out!” Joe coughed out, his hands were bloody and starting to slip. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold it!” His voice cracked and he forced himself to sound like a scared eight-year-old boy instead of the werewolf cub he was.

“No!” Her eyes were steely through the fear. “ _Not without you!”_

His lips twitched into something that could've been a smile, before he ignored her entirely. “Just slide her out! _Please!”_ Desperation soaking into his voice like the water had soaked into the T-Rex.

Hands reached in and closed around her shoulders, he saw her eyes widen.

“No! _Joey!”_

She slid out seamlessly with a few sharp pulls, sliding back with painful gravelly scraping noise.

Leaving him alone to gawk down at his own blood. He felt woozy all of a sudden and his arms started to burn from where they attempted to support all of the weight.

Ari was instantly on her belly, peering into the crack, extending her hand.

“Come on, Joey! I’ll pull you out!”

It would crush them both if she tried.

“Get back, Ari!” He bit out around a whine. His blood was making everything wet and sticky. He was having trouble trying to hold on and the scraping of his skin raw by the underbelly of the car, with motor oil dripping into his massacred flesh, was far from helping.

“Joey, take my hand okay? We’ll pull you out.” Jeff’s voice was low, soothing and Joey almost believed it. Almost.

“I can’t.” He cried out and sounded painfully human.

“Yes, you can.”

The hand was waving in front of his face, so insistent. He tried to shift his weight, but the car was having none of it, it listed to the side and dug painfully into the soft tissue of his calf. His scream was deafening.

Sam, Richard and Jeff were frantically yelling his name and he felt sick, the world growing black around the edges, forcing himself to stay human was so taxing. Richard was on his knees, it must have been painful for the older man, crooning soft nothings, trying to keep him still and calm. Sam and Jeff were rushing around, trying to devise a way to get him out, Steven was barking orders at the men around him. But still, his world just got darker and darker.

Suddenly, just when he though he couldn’t take it anymore, he heard a _howl_ pierce the night air.

It was long, drawn out and was getting closer and closer.

It was calling out for him, he ached to respond, but he swallowed back the urge with the last bit of willpower he had left.

He would have known his Uncle Rency’s howl anywhere, and he sagged forwards in sheer relief as a single clawed hand, a cross between both man and wolf, snapped underneath the car and dig in, crunching a fistful in its grip, the other hand grabbing the scruff of his neck, deep enough to draw blood.

He was dragged free from the car and into his uncle’s desperate hold at the same time that Lawrence snapped up his wrist, throwing up the fucking car and sending it careening directly into the mock wire-fence, all in a single breath. Then Uncle Rency was nosing into his hair, chuffing softly.

Joey was whining, frantically licking his uncle’s nose, the closest he could get to a muzzle while Rency was mostly human.

Happy and content just to be in each other’s embrace once more.

He wriggled around in discomfort, couldn't help himself, as his uncle nosed at all the shallow cuts on his back, quickly scabbing over with his natural healing ability. Although a long raspy pink tongue did lap at a few of them, just to clean the debris away.

Joey was so relieved to be in his uncle’s arms again, realizing belatedly that his Uncle Rency had actually been by the trailers across the lot maybe five minutes ago, nearly a half a mile away and there was only one way he could’ve gotten to his side so quickly. He knew if he raised his head, he’d see his uncle’s eyes glowing the unmistakeable shade of _Wolf_. His were doing the same.

“Is everyone alright?”

Uncle Rency’s voice was low, gravelly, hidden in that place between wolf and man. His eyes flicked around nervously at the pale human faces that surrounded them.

“You just _threw a car…_ _into the fence_ …” Sam whispered, as if afraid that raising his voice would make the situation more real, one arm wrapped tightly around Ariana’s shoulders, the young blonde couldn’t tear her eyes away from the two of them.

Jeff had wet hair dripping down his neck, and Joey’s blood on his pants.

Richard was tightly gripping his character’s cane, as if he legitimately needed it, perhaps it doubled as a security blanket… or a _weapon._

Joe could feel the way his uncle held him closer, tighter.

As if contemplating their escape from the situation.

The ginger boy’s eyes flicked up to his uncle’s, taking in the way they glowed orange-yellow still in the lowlight and allowed his own to retain the same form.

“Your eyes…”

Rency’s bared his teeth, some would have called it a smile, but Joe knew better.

“I suppose you want an _explanation._ ” He drawled, looking quite the beast.

Looking quite the _threat._

At least until Tally was there, racing over to them with Ariana’s parents and a few concerned crew members in tow.

He was all over them in an instant, fussing over Joey’s back and hands, pressing soothing kisses to Rency’s jawline. Holding onto them like they were his lifeline, like they were his whole world in a nutshell.

Then, he pointedly stood in front of them, shoulders erect, his hair tickling the inside of Joey’s nose, his hands reaching back to rest on Ren’s hips. Regarding the humans around them with a cold sort of fear. _(Remembering with a jolt, that while in nature he was more similar to those in front of him than those behind, his mate and child were in danger and he had to protect them)._

That he would always protect them with all he had.

And that protection started with this:

_“Is there somewhere private we could talk?”_

  
-X-

  
_“A paradise untouched by man_  
_Within this world blessed with love_  
_A simple life, they live in peace_

_Softly tread the sand below your feet now…”_

  
-X-

  
Ginny would remember so many things that night she bled into the snow.

Fighting the last fight she would ever know.

She would remember mornings in bed, lazy dawns with John’s hair in that impossible perm that was near-untamable in the early light, Ronnie with her swell of tummy and the socks that never matched, with grips on the bottom like she was an old lady. John who always smelled of cigarettes and aftershave on weekends. Ronnie who could never manage to clean off makeup when she wore it, leaving remnants on her face for days afterward, stains of lipstick in the cracks of her mouth, liner smudged on her waterline.

They were so _beautiful_ and they were all _hers._

“Maman!” Mikey trilled, climbing on the bed to bounce on her tummy. She laughed into his soft brown hair, John’s brown hair, long and shaggy growing past his chin.

Laura would toddle in right after, coming in for a cuddle and knowing full well that Ginny would be the only one awake.

By the time John and Ronnie would rejoin the land of the living, their children would be asleep in the arms of their Maman. Robbie with his head nestled into her neck, Laura asleep on her chest and Mikey with his head pillowed on her belly. All of them snuggled together.

A _family._

As Ginny bled out, she kissed the damp redhead of her newborn son, and hoped against hope that her other children would forgive her for leaving their lives the way she had and leaving them with a new little brother to boot. She hoped that they would know him one day.

Part of her even hoped that they would remember her.

That they would remember the second mother who taught them conversational French. Who told the most wonderful stories and let them have pancakes for dinner. Who helped them get dressed in the mornings and pack up their backpacks for school. The one who slept in with them on lazy mornings and kissed them to sleep each night.

Who was in their lives one moment and gone the next.

As she wept blood and tears into the snow.

She liked to think that maybe she would have gone home one day.

Maybe if she’d woken up the next morning...

  
It could have been to John’s ridiculous perm and Ronnie’s grippy socks.

  
-X-

  
“ _Beneath the shelter of the trees_  
_Only love can enter here_  
_A simple life, they live in peace.”_

  
-X-

  
Lawrence didn’t go to his little sister’s funeral.

Not that there was one anyway.

She was buried on the sloping desolate lands of their family estate, like many of Valet blood before her.

He knew she was gone, long before his mother called with the news.

His mother didn’t tell him about Joey.

Not that he would have noticed if she had.

Not when Virginia was _gone_ , his baby sister with her flyaway red hair and incurable bad attitude, both of which she would give to the boy that he would one day call his son. _Gone._

And the light went with her.

_(Joey brought it back)._

  
-X-

  
_“Raise your head up_  
_Lift high the load_  
_Take strength from those that need you_

 _Build high the walls_  
_Build strong the beams_  
_A new life is waiting_

 _But danger's no stranger here…_ ”

  
-X-

  
“I shouldn’t have told him.”

Joe’s breath hitched as he pressed his nose into Rami’s collarbone, feeling the way the older man breathed deeply beneath his taut caramel skin.

“I didn’t know they all knew her.” That was enough to push him over the edge and Rami pressed a halo of kisses onto the crown of his redhead, as he cried with all the strength he had left in him. “I wish I did.”

His best-friend said everything right, did everything right.

“Joey, it’s all going to be okay. I’m here. I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere.” Rami’s soft lips brushed against the crinkles in the corners of Joe’s eyes pointedly, until the werewolf dragged his face up once more, letting their eyes meet.

 _“Stop hiding from me, Sledgehammer.”_ Putting on his Snafu voice to make him laugh, and yet it only made Joe crumple into his chest.

“The wolf always dies at the end.”

“What?” He could see the whites of Rami’s eyes, the tears of worry and exhaustion that made them droop, hazy and heavy.

“In stories like these, the wolf always dies at the end.”

He pulled away from the Egyptian man’s tender embrace and turned over, curling up into himself. Digging his claws into his thighs, gnawing on his bottom lip.

“You should go home, Rami.”

He was taken off-guard by the surprisingly strong pull of his best-friend, unfurling him like a pair of new wet butterfly wings. Exposing him, right there on the bed, weak and vulnerable. Rami could be quite scary with ire in his eyes.

“Joe, _I am. You’re_ my home.”

Rami was far scarier with love in those immeasurable eyes and the painful gentleness of his hands as he cupped Joe’s face, rubbing the edges of his stubbly red jaw with his thumbs, and kissing away the tears on his apple-round cheeks.

“I love you.”

_Tally’s Curse._

His ring glinted in the lowlight, mocking Joe.

 _He knew._  

  
-X-

  
_“No words describe a mother's tears_  
_No words can heal a broken heart_  
_A dream is gone, but where there's hope…”_

  
-X-

  
Ronnie cried when he told her.

John had been ready with a thousand empty platitudes.

_It wasn’t your fault._

_She didn’t tell us._

_I’m so sorry that she hurt you._

_I wish…_

Instead, John had a habit of falling in love with women who liked to surprise him. Ronnie raised her head from her hands, cheeks wet with tears, still as beautiful in her sixties as she’d been the day John had married her.

“Our girl must have been so scared.”

_She’d needed us._

John felt like crying himself.

_She was so young._

_Too young for this._

_Too young for us._

“I need to see him.”

His head had cleared of its mournful fog instantly. Ronnie looked so _determined,_ standing up and striding to their closet as if she could color-coordinate her life like she so often picked out an outfit to wear, resolute in the same way she’d been, when they were in their early twenties, feeling pressure on both sides to marry faster than the child in her belly could grow. Resolute in her desire to make things work, to be a wonderful wife and devoted mother, to make their family work.

“What?” John blinked sluggishly, confused. _Lost._

“I need to see our son.”

  
-X-

  
_“Somewhere something is calling for you_

 _Two worlds, one family_  
_Trust your heart_  
_Let fate decide_  
_To guide these lives we see…”_

  
-X-

 

 


End file.
